While other airlines had already cancelled evening services from Harbin to Yichun, an airline captain from Henan Airlines attempted to fly the route for the first time on August 24. The plane ended up crashing as it attempted to land at Yichun's small Lindu airport, the crash claimed the lives of 42 passengers and another 54 were injured.
Although responsibility for the crash is being placed at the feet of Henan Airlines, we should also scrutinize the involvement of the "Heilongjiang Virtual Regional Airline" (黑龙江支线模拟航空公司 Hēilóngjiāng Zhīxiàn Mónǐ Hángkōnggōngsī), a company backed by the Heilongjiang Airport Group, the provincial government of Heilongjiang and several city-level governments, including the Yichun Municipal government.
The Crash
The fateful Henan Airlines flight VD8387 that took off from Harbin that evening, was only the seventh evening flight that the airline had flown from the capital of Heilongjiang to Yichun. The airline only began flying the route on August 10 and offered services on Tuesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays.
China Southern Airlines was the first airline to offer an Harbin-Yichun service, including evening flights, but after flying the route for a period of time, the airline changed all evening flights to day flights for safety reasons.
According to a security report of the Heilongjiang branch of Southern Airlines released in August 2009, due to seasonal weather conditions and the location of the newly-constructed Yichun Lindu Airport, they concluded that it was not safe to offer night flights along the route. Southern Airlines decided that, as of September 1 that year, they would no longer fly the route at night.
However, at 20:51 on August 24, Qi Quanjun, a pilot with Henan Airlines took off in an E-190 aircraft, this was Qi's first flight along the route. When coming in to land at the Yichun airport at about 9.30pm in poor conditions that reduced visibility to less than 300 meters, the plane crashed 690 meters short of the runway. According to the official government report, 42 passengers died and another 54 were injured in the crash. The pilot was badly injured but did not die. Many of the original media reports stated that 43 passengers had died, but authorities have since confirmed that only 42 people died in the crash.
The day after the accident, all of Henan Airlines' fleet of E-190 aircraft were grounded and the general manager of the company was removed from his position.
A "Virtual" Regional Airline
What role did the "Heilongjiang Virtual Regional Airline" play in the crash? This "virtual" airline is not a regular airline, but something more akin to a charter company whose investors include the Heilongjiang Airport Group, the provincial government of Heilongjiang and several city-level governments, including the Yichun Municipal government. All the routes flown by the "virtual" airline are minor routes that the company has designed and mapped out for themselves, they also rent aircraft and crew to service the routes.
The plane that crashed on the evening of August 24 had been rented by this "virtual" airline to fly the Harbin-Mohe and Harbin-Yichun routes.
The "virtual" Heilongjiang Regional Airline is responsible for designing routes, marketing and renting airplanes. Cooperative airline companies provide and maintain the airplanes and crew.
An anonymous source from Heilongjiang Airport Group compared the process to renting cars. "Whether you want airlines to Yichun or to Russia, I will pay for them. I am responsible for nothing else."
The "virtual" airline company pays a rental fee to the airlines in order to guarantee that the airline company will make a profit from flying these less commercially viable routes. Sometimes they also draft a contract that divides up any profits made from ticket sales according to a settled ratio.
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