China airline to improve English after safety breach

A Chinese airline pledged Wednesday to improve its crews' English skills after one of its flights took off from a Japanese airport without authorisation. China Eastern Airlines did not say what caused the error, but pledged to "further improve the English communication skills of our flight crews to assure flight safety," suggesting it may have been a misunderstanding. The airline also said it was cooperating with an investigation by Japanese authorities into Monday's incident, in which its pilot took off from Osaka airport without clearance from air traffic controllers. "Eastern Airlines will fully cooperate with the investigation and will fully uphold the principle of safety first and operate in accordance with the law," the airline added in a statement posted online on Wednesday. The plane, which was carrying 245 passengers, took off without incident and landed safely in Shanghai, the China Daily reported. The latest incident comes after the privately-owned Chinese airline Juneyao said in August one of its pilots had refused to give up his landing slot to a passenger plane that issued a distress call to say it was running out of fuel. The pilot of the Qatar plane had alerted air traffic control in the eastern Chinese city of Hongqiao that it had just five minutes' worth of fuel left after it was diverted from Shanghai. China's civil aviation authority said at the time those responsible would be "severely punished". China Eastern officials were unavailable for comment Thursday.