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A TOTAL of 141 migrant workers landed in Changsha, provincial capital of their home province of Hunan at about 10:50 a.m. Friday (Feb 9) morning, less than an hour after a Southern Airlines chartered flight took off from Shenzhen.

The group, picked from 510 migrants qualified for the free flight offered by the airline company, was greeted by Li Hui, secretary of the Hunan Provincial Committee of the Communist Youth League in Changsha. Healthy Hunan migrants from poor families, with children at home and no criminal records could apply for the free flight, an official with the airline company said earlier.

More than 300 other migrants and students from poor families in Hunan had flown in from Beijing on another chartered flight earlier.

The passengers of the two flights were also given a welcome banquet Friday.

In the afternoon, volunteers in Changsha guided them onto buses heading for their respective hometowns.

During the flight, six migrants working in Shenzhen won free return air tickets through a lucky draw held by Zhang Wenqiang, captain of the flight.

The migrants, from various factories across the city, had been taken to Shenzhen International Airport in three big buses in the morning. The airline company then opened a "green passage" to help the migrants, who were taking a flight for the first time and unfamiliar with the procedures, to check in.

Editor: Wing