Yemeni Airways crashes: 150 pax dead

[nuune]

Airbus A310-300 carrying 150 people on board crashes in Indian Ocean, one child survived.

 

The flight was coming from Paris to comoros via San'a

 

 

 

A toddler has been rescued from the sea after a Yemenia Air plane crashed in the Indian Ocean near the Comoros islands with more than 150 people on board, Comoros officials said today.

 

 

Search teams have also recovered three bodies and debris from the plane, but no other survivors have been found so far, said an immigration officer, Rachida Abdullah.

 

 

The surviving child's nationality and gender are not known.

 

 

The plane carried 142 passengers, including at least three babies, and a crew of 11 Yemenis.

 

 

The Paris airports authority said 66 French nationals and a large number of Comoros nationals were aboard the Yemenia Air Airbus 310 plane, which was on the final leg of a flight from Paris and Marseille to Comoros via Yemen. The plane had stopped in Sana'a, on the way to Moroni, the Comoros capital on the main island of the archipelago.

 

 

Stéphane Salord, the consul general of the Comoros in the Provence-Alps-Côte d'Azur region of France, said: "There is considerable dismay. These are families that, each year on the eve of summer, leave Marseille and the region to rejoin their families in the Comoros and spend their holidays."

 

 

Nicolas Sarkozy, the French president, expressed his "deep emotion" at the crash as the French foreign minister, Bernard Kouchner, said that French planes and ships were heading to help in search operations at the Comoros government's request.

 

 

Ibrahim Kassim, a representative from Asenca, the regional air security body, said the plane was believed to have come down between three and six miles from the coast.

 

 

"We think the crash is somewhere along its landing approach," he said. "The weather is really not very favourable. The sea is very rough."

 

 

France's transport minister said that French aviation inspectors found a number of faults during a 2007 inspection of the plane that crashed.

 

Dominique Bussereau said on France's i-Tele television that the Airbus was inspected by France's civil aviation agency in 2007 and "a certain number of faults" were noticed. He said the plane, which had not returned to French air space since, was not on any European blacklists but "was subject to stricter surveillance on our part" and was scheduled for a review with EU safety officials.

 

 

An Airbus statement said the plane went into service 19 years ago, in 1990, and had accumulated 51,900 flight hours. It had been operated by Yemenia Air since 1999.

 

Airbus identified the plane's serial number as 535, and said it was sending a team of specialists to the Comoros.

 

 

The A310-300 is a twin-engine widebody jet that can seat up to 220 passengers. There are 214 A310s in service worldwide with 41 operators.

 

 

Comoros, a Yemeni state, covers three small volcanic islands, Grande Comore, Anjouan and Mohéli, in the Mozambique channel, about 1,800 miles south of Yemen, between Africa's south-eastern coast and Madagascar.

 

 

The Yemenia plane is the second Airbus to crash into the sea this month. An Air France Airbus A330-200 flying to France from Brazil crashed into the Atlantic ocean killing 228 people on board on 1 June.

 

 

In 1996, a hijacked Ethiopian Airlines Boeing 767 also crashed into the sea off the Comoros islands in 1996, killing 125 of 175 passengers and crew.

 

 

Yemenia is 51% owned by the Yemeni government and 49% owned by the Saudi Arabian government. Its fleet includes two Airbus 330-200s, four Airbus 310-300s and four Boeing 737-800s.

 

 

Guardian

[-Lily-]

You see this is why I am having second thoughts about long distance traveling these days.

 

Nuune, does this worry you at all in your line of work?

[nuune]

Lily, not at all, but it is sad to see people dying this way, they have found a number of faults on this particular plane since 2007, the question now being asked is, why nothin has being done to repair those faults, it was operated by Yemenia Airways

 

 

This plane was an old one and in service for more than 19 years, and had 51,900 flight hours, it should have a maintenance check ups every often.

 

 

Again, tii Ilaah baa qoran, qofna ajashiisa dhaafi maayo

[Buuxo]

Bismillah this is scary,all these airplanes droping from the sky.

[Ducaysane]

I dont like flying with airplanes. Hadii Afrika baabuur lagu tagi karo waan ku aadi lahaa.

[NASSIR]

The Yemenia plane is the

second Airbus

to crash into the sea this month. An Air France Airbus A330-200 flying to France from Brazil crashed into the Atlantic ocean killing 228 people on board on 1 June.

Airbus scares me for real.

[nuune]

^^ Nothing to scare yaa NASSIR, Airbus is even more safer than Boeing, the problem comes down to maitenance, and this particular airline was not well taken care of as many reports are emerging, usually some airline companies they avoid the expensive maintenance of their aircrafts and only use cheap or unreliable maintenance.

 

 

First the Airbus plane that left Paris to San'a a was an Airbus A330, the one that crashed is an Airbus A310 and only operated from San'aa to Comoros, this particular airline was banned from European Airspaces, so the Yemen Airways used more reliable airline to do the trick from Paris to San'aa, then transferred the passengers and used the banned airline from San'aa to Comoros.

 

 

Alot of damning reports are coming out as to the safety of Yemenia planes, most of its planes are banned from European airspaces after failing many tests.

 

 

PS: Imagine the flight path that doomed plane took, it used Somali Airspace with no knowledge of any Somali Air Trafic Controlers or Somali Aviation Authority who will ban or grant permission to fly over Somali Airspace, imagine that plane crashing into a village in Somalia and causing alot of damage.

 

 

Hopefully Somalia will get its aviation organisations back on track once peace is achieved.

 

 

Again, isn't some of Daallo airlines and other Somali owned planes banned from Dubai and other places, and the trick they use is they rent modern planes to take passengers from Dubai to Djibouti, then use old planes to transfer passengers from Dubai to hargeisa to mogadisho and boosaaso.

 

 

Now the Comoros relatives of victims are complaining that they were not given the same treatment as of that of Air France crash last month, they said were asked IDs at Paris Airports, this also shows double standard as to the handling of the crises, the French are saying they are only responsible the flight that left from Paris to San'a, and not the San'aa to Moroni.

 

 

Eeven thne mainstream media are not reporting well, except France 24 hour english channel which is only blaming Yemenia Airways for the crash.