Alert issued to carriers to take passengers out from quake-hit region
A photo posted on microblogging shows passengers wait at the Jiuzhai Huanglong Airport Tuesday night after a 7.0-magnitude earthquake jolted Jiuzhaigou County in southwest China's Sichuan Province at 9:19pm Tuesday.
Airlines are operating normally to evacuate tourists from the earthquake jolted Jiuzhaigou County in southwest China's Sichuan Province, the nation’s civil aviation authority said today.
The Civil Aviation Administration of China issued a third-level alert this morning to ask domestic carriers to support the rescue work after a 7.0-magnitude earthquake jolted the county at 9:19pm yesterday.
The Jiuzhai Huanglong Airport in the quake-jolted county and the nearby Aba Hongyuan Airport are operating normally with sufficient oil storage, the Southwest Regional Administration of CAAC announced today. The weather condition today is also suitable for takeoff and landing at both airports.
“The airports must check the conditions on runways and tarmacs in time while airlines should focus on tourists’ evaluations as well as offer refund or flight change services,” the CAAC said.
A team of CAAC officials to coordinate and support the flight operations has taken Air China’s Flight CA412X to land at the Jiuzhai Airport at 8:30am.
The air traffic control facilities and terminal building are operating smoothly at the Jiuzhai airport, the airport authority said. A section of the airport expressway was damaged by the earthquake but no casualty was reported from the airport, according to the civil aviation web portal CARNOC.com.
The first flight, Air China’s CA4393, after the earthquake took off at 9:47pm from Jiuzhai to Guangzhou yesterday, while the first landing flight from Changsha in central Hunan Province landed at 10:27pm.
Air China has triggered an emergency response to support the rescuing work, the nation’s flagship carrier said. The airline will operate flights as usual today to evacuate tourists stranded in the county.
“The airline can dispatch additional flights to rescue or evacuate victims any time,” Air China said in a statement.
Domestic airlines, including the Air China, China Eastern, China Southern, Spring Airlines, Sichuan Airlines and Chengdu Airlines have announced to offer free refund and flight change services for flights to or from the quake-hit region.
The Shanghai-based Spring Airlines said its passengers can refund or change schedule for any flight to or from Sichuan Province through August 18, the budget carrier said.
