All sixty-one passengers and crew on a Chinese airliner have been killed when their plane crashed on a domestic flight in the eastern province of Zhejiang.

Witnesses reported that the plane narrowly missed factories and homes on its approach to Wenzhou city airport.

The plane, a Tupolev, on a flight from the southwestern city of Chongqing to Wenzhou came down just a few minutes short of its destination and exploded after hitting the ground.

Emergency services have been searching the wreckage for the black box the data recorder which could explain China's worst air crash in five years.

News of the accident came hours after China had announced it was planning to spend over one billion dollars upgrading its air-traffic control systems to improve safety.