Navigator Reported Wings Shaking Before Fatal China Crash

The navigator of a Russian-built airliner that crashed, killing all 160 people aboard, radioed before impact that the plane’s wings were trembling, an official report said Tuesday.

The China Northwest Airlines Tupolev-154 crashed into a field and broke in pieces minutes after takeoff Monday morning from Xian, a popular tourist city in northern China.

The crash, China’s worst aviation disaster, renewed fears that safety is suffering as China’s airline industry grows faster than its supply of experienced crew and modern equipment.

The official New China News Agency said the navigator radioed about the shaking wings 14 minutes after takeoff. The plane crashed moments later, it said.

Among the dead were two Americans, an Italian family of four, two young British male tourists and an Australian woman, their embassies said.

Lorraine Toly, the U.S. Embassy spokeswoman, identified the dead Americans as Mark Stoel of Michigan and Mark Woodrum of West Virginia.

Woodrum’s family said he was 25 and had lived in Ripley, W. Va. Stoel was from Manistee, Mich., according to Manistee High School Principal Bob Riemersma. He graduated in 1989.

China’s Foreign Ministry identified another foreigner as Swiss, but the Swiss Embassy in Beijing said it was awaiting confirmation.

Authorities said the crash was under investigation and refused to comment on possible causes.

The official China Daily newspaper said experts were analyzing the flight recorder recovered from the wreckage. It quoted three witnesses who said they heard two loud explosions overhead and then saw a ball of fire crashing to the ground, scattering debris across a wide area.

But video footage of the crash site broadcast on state television showed little evidence of an explosion. The main body of the plane, which ended up on its back in a field, appeared uncharred, as did a wing lying some distance away in a shallow stream.

Both Americans were recent college graduates who taught English at an engineering institute about 125 miles southwest of Xian, said Wei Shuiyi, the school’s foreign affairs officer.

He said they had planned to take the plane to Guangzhou, near Hong Kong in southern China, and then fly on to the United States for a summer vacation.

The Communist Party newspaper People’s Daily said the victims’ bodies were recovered Monday from the crash site about 600 miles southwest of Beijing.

China Northwest has no relationship to the U.S. carrier Northwest Airlines.