A HONGKONG man was among the 59 people killed in China's latest air disaster.
Named as S. P. Pan, the businessman was one of the 108 passengers and five crew on board the China Northwestern Airlines flight 2119 to Beijing, that crashed into marshland on Friday shortly after a second take-off attempt. Most of the passengers were from the mainland.
The death toll is expected to rise as rescuers continue searching through the wreckage and doctors work round-the-clock to perform emergency surgery on severely injured passengers.
The British Aerospace 146 Whisperjet careered off the runway in the northwestern town of Yinchuan in Ningxia province, into a shallow lake where it broke apart.
The aircraft attempted two takeoffs. After the first one was aborted at 2.20 pm local time, the pilots attempted a second at 2.41 pm.
''The plane never got more than 10 metres off the ground before it dropped,'' said Zhang Rong, an official from the state-run Civil Aviation Administration of China who witnessed the crash. ''There was no explosion, but the plane was badly damaged.'' Witnesses said the weather was fine and clear.