The head of China's civil aviation authority has reminded organizations that fly passenger airplanes they must maintain rigorous safety standards despite an extended accident-free period in China.

Chinese civil aircraft operators have notched up 2.2 million hours of accident-free flying since May of last year, Yang Yuanyuan, director of the General Administration of Civil Aviation of China (CAAC), said yesterday.

The last accident occurred on May 7, 2002, when an MD-82 passenger aircraft crashed into the sea near Dalian in Northeast China, killing 112 aboard.

Yang said a total of 11 million passengers have flown in Chinese civil aircraft through August this year, up from 8.8 million during the same period last year.

Addressing the China Civil Aviation College in the city of Luoyang in central China's Henan Province, the largest passenger aircraft pilot training base in the country, Yang said that "despite the achievement, we should not slacken our safety standards."

In another development, the CAAC announced it has decided to transfer the management rights of 93 airports to provincial governments by the end of this year.

Twenty-three provincial-level management bureaux will be removed from the CAAC's jurisdiction before the end of the year, a CAAC spokesman said.

But the Beijing Capital International Airport and airports in the Tibet Autonomous Region are not on the management transfer list.

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