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All the 112 persons, including eight foreigners, on a China Northern Airlines plane were feared dead after it crashed on Tuesday night off the coast in Dalian, in northeast China's Liaoning province, minutes before it was to touch down following a fire in the cabin.
Rescue workers have so far salvaged 50 bodies from the sea, the official Xinhua news agency reported.
The plane, a MD-82, carrying 103 passengers and nine crew members crashed into the sea an hour after it took off from Beijing's international airport.
The search and rescue work, hampered by darkness, continued till late in the night as more than 30 ships scoured the sea looking for bodies and possible survivors.
But there is little hope of any survivors, Xinhua said.
The crash has taken place during the busy post-holiday season with the Chinese returning to work after enjoying a week-long holiday in connection with the International Labour Day.
The foreigners were from Japan and South Korea.
At around 2132 local time (1902 IST), the ground control centre lost contact with the plane after its captain reported that a fire had broken out in the cabin. The plane crashed into the Dalian Bay less than 10 kilometres from the coast at around 2140 hrs.
The airliner had taken off from the Beijing international airport at 2037 hrs and was scheduled to land in Dalian at 2140 hrs.
This is the second air crash of a Chinese passenger plane in less than a month.
On April 15, an Air China Boeing 767-200 plane crashed near Pusan in South Korea while on a flight from Beijing to Pusan, killing 122 people.
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