China domestic flight 'hijacked'

China says a Chinese aircraft was hijacked on an internal flight on Monday, but that the incident had been "successfully resolved".

"Fifty minutes after take-off, a young man... claimed he wanted to hijack the plane and fly to South Korea," AFP quoted an official statement as saying.

The plane made an emergency landing in Zhengzhou, central China, and police removed the man, the statement said.

The Air China plane had been en route from Beijing to Changsha in the south.

State-owned Air China is the country's flagship carrier, with a fleet of about 120 aircraft.

The statement issued by the Civil Aviation Administration of China (CAAC) said the man was around 30 years old and had a history of mental illness.

An official at Beijing airport said 108 passengers had checked in for Flight CA1343, which took off at 0840 local time (0040 GMT) and had been scheduled to land in Changsha, Hunan province, at 1030 local time (0230 GMT).

The plane instead made an emergency landing in Zhengzhou at 09.50 local time (0150 GMT).

"It is not that serious, we even cannot define it as a 'hijacking'," a spokeswoman from CAAC told Reuters, but gave no further details.

It is not clear how the man tried to hijack the plane, or how it was resolved.

China tightened its security at airports after suffering a string of airline hijackings in the mid-1990s.