PEKING -- A Chinese domestic airliner carrying 41 people crashed on landing in the eastern city of Jinan, killing 38 people, including two Americans, officials said Saturday.
Chinese officials delayed announcing the accident for nearly 24 hours and gave few details of the crash Friday night. Officials said the remaining three were in serious condition Saturday in a Jinan hospital.
Identities of the victims were expected to be released Sunday.
The officials said the aging, Soviet-built Antonov-24 was on a flight from Shanghai with 34 passengers and seven crew on board when it crashed while attempting to land Friday evening at Jinan airport, 250 miles southeast of Peking.
The Civil Aviation Administration of China said 38 of the 41 people aboard the twin-engine turbo-prop were killed.
'We have two names of Americans but don't want to release them until we can verify who they are and notify next of kin,' embassy spokesman Tony Sariti said.
'We know for sure one of them was a businessman. We should be able to release their names on Sunday.'
Sariti said CAAC computers in Shanghai listed the two American men as having purchased tickets for the flight to Peking with stopovers in Nanjing Jinan. But he said U.S. officials were uncertain if the men's names were on the final manifest, which CAAC was attempting to get from Nanjing.
'Until their bodies are positively identified, were not going to give any names,' he said.
In addition to the two Americans, there were four Hong Kong residents reported aboard the plane, CAAC officials said. The rest of the passengers and crew were believed to be Chinese citizens.
In the past, the Chinese have not disclosed plane crashes unless foreigners were involved.
CAAC investigators led by the state-run airlines deputy director general, Guo Hao, were sent to Jinan to determine the cause of the crash, the official Xinhua News Agency said.
They said CAAC flight 5109 left Shanghai at 3:30 p.m. (02:30 a.m. EST) Friday, made a stopover in Nanjing, and crashed on landing at Jinan at 6:50 p.m. (5:50 a.m. EST).
The airline's last reported accident was Sept. 15, 1983, when a military jet landing at the southern city of Guilin sideswiped a CAAC passenger plane preparing to take off, killing 11 people.
A 1982 Christmas Eve crash in Canton killed 23 people, three of them Americans.
In the worst crash reported, a CAAC jetliner slammed into a mountain near Guilin in April 1982, killing all 112 people aboard, including 52 Hong Kong residents and two Americans.
The problem-plagued airline, known for its surly employees, poor efficiency and bad management, is currently being reorganized into a network of regional air services.
