Chinese Vice-Premier Huang Ju has asked China's civil aviation sector to guarantee safe development, saying personnel training, infrastructure construction and management skills need improvement.

"The civil aviation sector has achieved fast growth this year," Huang said in Beijing on December 28 at a meeting with some delegates to a national civil aviation work conference. "But we should be conscious of existing problems. The foundation for civil aviation safety is still unfirm." Huang mentioned some of the achievements of the sector in 2004: total turnover is set to grow 35 percent year-on-year to 20 billion ton-kilometers and passenger traffic is set to grow 38 percent to 100 million; profits of the whole sector is set to reach a new record; and continuous safe flight time reached 5.16 million hours.

But he said the major air accident of November 21, in which a CRJ-200 jet carrying 47 passengers and six crew members crashed one minute after takeover in Baotou City, north China's Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region, revealed "there are flaws in the safety links.

"Personnel training, infrastructure construction and management level haven't kept pace with the fast business growth. The level of service is still far below the expectations of the people," he said.

He asked the sector to make safety the top priority of their work and strengthen safety supervision and management.

Huang also asked the sector to accelerate development of civil aviation in the western region, the general aviation, international transport, goods and mail transport and feeder line transport.

Source: Xinhua