A top aviation official defended the safety of the airport in Northeast China where a plane crashed while approaching the runway - the country's worst commercial air disaster in nearly six years.

Forty-two of the 96 people on board the Henan Airlines flight were killed and the fuselage of the Brazilian-made ERJ-190 jet was burned to bits in a forest valley about 1.5 kilometers from the runway at Yichun city's Lindu Airport Tuesday night.

A major Chinese airline - China Southern - last year adjusted night flights into Yichun, citing concerns about the surrounding terrain, runway lighting and weather conditions. China Southern was the only carrier to fly the Harbin-Yichun route before Henan Airlines.

But Li Jian, deputy director of the Civil Aviation Administration of China, said the airport in Heilongjiang province meets all safety requirements.

"It is no comparison to big airports, but the safety standards are guaranteed," Li said on Wednesday night. The airport was built to handle nighttime flights, he said.

The airport was closed after the crash Tuesday night but reopened on Thursday.

The plane's flight recorders were found on Wednesday and sent to Beijing for decoding the same day, officials from the Civil Aviation Administration of China said on Thursday. But there were no updates on the cause of the crash.

Initial probes and survivors' accounts indicate the plane made a premature landing and crashed on the ground, cracking the cabin and triggering an explosion.

No signs of sabotage have been found, investigators said.