What concerns you the most while you are booking an air ticket? The price or the safety? Perhaps more people would say the safety, while travelling by air is said
to be the most unlikely dangerous vehicle. I remember the first time when I was booking the airline tickets online about five years ago. I checked the history of disasters of every airline in China. I was so worried about having accidents during my first China Flights. Finally I booked the tickets from China Southern Airlines to Xia Men. And I also bought the insurance for myself. It turned out nothing needs to be worried about at all. However, I still would like to share with you about the history of disasters happened in Chinese Airlines.
The latest horrible disaster just happened this year in Yichun, Hei Long Jiang Province. An airplane of Henan Airlines with
91 passengers and 5 crew members, burst into fire after overshooting the runway at the airport at 9:36pm, local time on Aug 24, 2010. 43 people died in this crash, while others had injuries of different conditions. Unfortunately one of my colleague’s father was severely injured with large area of skins burned, in this accident. The aircraft was Brazilian-made Embraer ERJ-190, taking off from the provincial capital Harbin at 8:51pm. The heavy fog at that night mainly caused this disaster. However, other factors have not been eliminated yet. This air crash ended the remarkable air travel safety record of 2,102 days (more than five years).
A B-3072 CRJ 200 airplane, owned by the Yunna branch (The former Yunnan Airlines) 
of China Eastern Airlines, crashed into a frozen lake in Nanhai Park in Baotou, a city of Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region. 55 people, including 47 passengers, 6 crew members, and 2 ground crews, were killed in this accident. The reason was that the airplane was parked overnight in a rather cold weather and the wings were covered with the frost, but the morning service before departures forgot to get the wings de-iced. As a result, the frost severely degraded the aerodynamic characteristics of the wing and the airplane entered a stall shortly after taking off.
The most unreliable airlines which had the most numbers of air crash might be the China Airlines. This is the largest commercial aviation airline in Taiwan, however, the safety of this flights operated by this company is always an issue, though this situation is getting better recently. The safety record is just a little bit better than the Korean Airlines. From 1969 to present, China Airlines 
has caused 806 passengers and crew members to death in total. In 2002, the CI622 flight (Boeing 747-200) to Hong Kong disintegrated in the air and crashed into the Penghu. The cause was that the damaged part of an landing problem in 22 years ago was not repaired properly according the rules of Boeing. And this crack expanded larger and larger after flying under the high pressure for many years. Finally, the whole airplane disaggregated during the flight and led to this tragedy. All the passengers and crew members, 225 people in total, was dead because of this. And just four years before this accident in 2002, an A300-600 airplane of the same airlines crashed and caused 196 passengers and 7 ground crew to death.
Despite these tragedies, travelling by air is still the safest and most convenient method. And it is inevitable for international trips. There is no way to exclude the possibilities absolutely, except for buying insurance and trying to take better reputation airlines. And I would also suggest choose large cities for your destination and then you can go to other small cities by other means, because larger cities will have larger and better airports and services. If you need more information of China airlines, please check Air China.
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