Airliner rushes child to hospital in Beijing

Pu Yanfang on a stretcher is carried onto a plane of China Eastern Airlines on April 23, 2014. [Photo: Xinhua]

A flight attendant feeds Pu on the plane on April 23, 2014, with children's toys and balloons given by the crew around her. [Photo: Xinhua]

China Eastern Airlines has helped to transport a severely burnt 5-year-old girl from Yunnan province to Beijing on April 23.

Pu Yanfang, who is of the Derung ethnic group, suffered burns from contact with the fireplace in her house on April 10. Her evacuation was only possible as the armed police in the township where she lives, Dulongjiang, sent a car to rush her to Gongshan People's Hospital – using a new highway tunnel connecting the township to the county seat of Gongshan, in northwest Yunnan.

Most of the country's Derung people live in the township of Dulongjiang.

However, as the hospital does not have advanced medical equipment, Pu's parents and the soldiers then took her to a hospital in the neighboring city of Baoshan on April 15.

China Eastern Airlines soon heard of her plight and promised to transport the child to Beijing free of charge.

The airliner removed some seats on one of its planes, making room for a stretcher for her and, at 11:20 am on April 23, flight MU5914 carrying Pu and five of her family members took off from Baoshan Airport for Kunming, the provincial capital.

The airliner then decided that the same plane could fly the next leg of the journey, so that Pu would not need to be moved to another aircraft.

The crew gave her children's books and toys and, two hours later, the plane took off again, this time to Beijing.

Upon their arrival at Beijing International Capital Airport, Pu and her family were taken to an ambulance which headed directly to the General Hospital of the Chinese People's Armed Police Forces, one of the best hospitals in Beijing.