user

Submitted

news

view all

Find, view and share videos about news and entertainment from around the Web.
See Videos »

most

COMMENTED

stories

most

RECENT

comments

Xkglady on Police: Dad Lured Son Home, Shot Him
champbubbat on Quacking Phone Interrupts Obama
HoustonFirstSBC on Panel Urges Smaller Doses of Painkillers
Skyspy696 on Test Indicates Bones Are St. Paul's
ArnoldSerow on More Sex May Mean Better Sperm

News Alerts

The latest updates sent straight to your inbox.

Get AOL News Alerts »

Jet With 153 Crashes, Teen Survives

By AHMED AL-HAJ and TOM MALITI

posted: 7 MINUTES AGO

comments: 483

filed under: Plane Accidents, World News

Text SizeAAA

MORONI, Comoros (June 30) –- A Yemeni jetliner carrying 153 people crashed in the Indian Ocean on Tuesday as it came in for a landing on the island nation of Comoros. Yemeni officials said a teenage girl survived.

The crash came two years after aviation officials reported faults with the plane, an Airbus 310 flying the last leg of a journey from Paris and Marseille to Comoros, with a stop in Yemen to change planes. Most of the passengers were from Comoros, a former French colony. Sixty-six on board were French nationals.

Skip over this content

More Coverage: The World's Deadliest Air Disasters

Khaled el-Kaei, the head of Yemenia airline's public relations office, said a 14-year-old girl survived the crash. And Yemen's embassy in Washington issued a statement saying a young girl survived and was taken to a hospital. It also said five bodies were recovered.

There were earlier reports that a 5-year-old boy survived. El-Kaei said that was not known and the airline had lost contact with its office in Comoros because of bad weather.

Yemeni civil aviation deputy chief Mohammed Abdul Qader said the flight data recorder had not been found and it was too early to speculate on the cause of the crash. But he said the wind was 40 mph as the plane was landing in the middle of the night.

"The weather was very bad," he said, adding the windy conditions hampered rescue efforts.

The Yemenia plane was the second Airbus to crash into the sea this month. An Air France Airbus A330-200 crashed into the Atlantic Ocean on June 1, killing all 228 people on board, as it flew from Rio de Janeiro to Paris.

The Comoros is an archipelago of three main islands situated 1,800 miles south of Yemen, between Africa's southeastern coast and the island of Madagascar. It is a former French colony of 700,000 people.

In France, school vacations began this week and many on the plane were heading home to visit.

Skip over this content

Gen. Bruno de Bourdoncle de Saint-Salvy, the senior commander for French forces in the southern Indian Ocean, said the Airbus 310 crashed in deep waters about 9 miles north of the Comoran coast and 21 miles from the Moroni airport.

French aviation inspectors found a "number of faults" during a 2007 inspection of the plane that went down, French Transport Minister Dominique Bussereau said.

In Brussels, EU Transport Commissioner Antonio Tajani said the airline had previously met EU safety checks and was not on the bloc's blacklist. But he said a full investigation was now being started amid questions why passengers were put on another jet in the Yemeni capital of San'a.

An Airbus statement said the plane that crashed went into service 19 years ago, in 1990, and had accumulated 51,900 flight hours. It has been operated by Yemenia since 1999. Airbus said it was sending a team of specialists to the Comoros.

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

A crisis center was set up at Charles de Gaulle airport in Paris. Many passengers were from the French city of Marseille, home to around 80,000 immigrant Comorans, more even than Comoros' capital of Moroni.

Some French Comorans insisted that their earlier warnings about the airline's safety weren't heeded by authorities.

Stephane Salord, the Comoros' honorary consul in Marseille, called Yemenia's aircraft "flying cattle trucks."

"This A310 is a plane that has posed problems for a long time, it is absolutely inadmissible that this airline Yemenia played with the lives of its passengers this way," he said.

"Some people stand the whole way to Moroni," said Mohamed Ali, a Comoran who went to Yemenia's headquarters in Paris to try to get more information.

Thoue Djoumbe, a 28-year-old woman who lives in the French town of Fontainebleau, said she and others had complained about the airline for years.

Skip over this content

http://xml.channel.aol.com/xmlpublisher/fetch.v2.xml?option=expand_relative_urls&dataUrlNodes=uiConfig,feedConfig,localizationConfig,entry&id=647374&pid=647373&uts=1246364174

http://www.aolcdn.com/ke/media_gallery/v1/ke_media_gallery_wrapper.swf

Air Accidents in the News

An Air France plane carrying 228 people went down in the Atlantic Ocean after running into violent weather on May 31. The Airbus A330-200 had been en route from Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, to Paris. Everyone on board perished.

Forca Aerea Brasileira / LatinContent / Getty Images

"It's a lottery when you travel to Comoros," said Djoumbe. "We've organized boycotts, we've told the Comoran community not to fly on Yemenia airways because they make a lot of money off of us and meanwhile the conditions on the planes are disastrous."

Christophe Prazuck, French military spokesman, said a patrol boat and reconnaissance ship were being sent to the crash site as well a military transport plane. The French were sending divers as well as medical personnel, he said.

French President Nicolas Sarkozy "expressed his deep emotion" about the crash and asked the French military to help in the rescue operation, particularly from the French islands of Mayotte and Reunion.

Yemenia airline officials say the 11-member crew was made up of six Yemenis, including the pilot, two Moroccans, one Indonesian, one Ethiopian and 1 Filipino. They spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak to the media.

Al-Haj contributed to this report from San'a, Yemen. Associated Press writers Deborah Seward, Angela Charlton and Greg Keller in Paris, Sarah El Deeb in Cairo and Yoann Guilloux in Saint-Denis de la Reunion, Reunion Island, contributed to this report.

Copyright 2009 The Associated Press. The information contained in the AP news report may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or otherwise distributed without the prior written authority of The Associated Press. Active hyperlinks have been inserted by AOL.

2009-06-29 22:21:54

GOOD READ?

82 %

18 %

121 votes

AP International NewsBrief at 3:30 p.m. EDT
52 minutes ago
Yemeni plane with 153 crashes off Comoros Islands
3 hours ago
Brazil Crash Black Boxes May Be Lost
27 days ago

See More Related Articles and Blog Posts

(483)

Sort by:

1 - 10

<< Previous Next 10 >>

Sportsguy56201

04:39 PMJun 30 2009

Anyone else want to fly to or from France anymore?

AVG RATING:

(0)

REPORT!

sign-in to rate

jacf1fan

04:35 PMJun 30 2009

just fly quantas....havent crashed anything yet

AVG RATING:

(0)

REPORT!

sign-in to rate

Vegasweb

04:27 PMJun 30 2009

Well, like they always say- "If its not a Boeing, I'm NOT going". Airbus...airlines are lining up to buy cheap planes funded by the french government.

AVG RATING:

(1)

REPORT!

sign-in to rate

jacf1fan

04:27 PMJun 30 2009

yeah, a boeing has never crashed......uh twa flight 800 out of jfk ring a bell morons?

AVG RATING:

(0)

REPORT!

sign-in to rate

Nje305

04:27 PMJun 30 2009

THIS IS IN RESPONSE TOO TWA 800 i think it was boeing 747 ,but it was old but no excuse it should not happen......

AVG RATING:

(0)

REPORT!

sign-in to rate

Dal31550

04:24 PMJun 30 2009

Take the good old automobile. The price of gas sucks but at least you can kill yourself.

AVG RATING:

(0)

REPORT!

sign-in to rate

DannoDn2

04:23 PMJun 30 2009

strange..both plane's that crashed were either going to paris or leaving paris...odd..

AVG RATING:

(0)

REPORT!

sign-in to rate

Nje305

04:22 PMJun 30 2009

Air travel has been here for a very long time a they still havent mastered it yet. And they never will, we suppose to be living like the jetsons by now....RIGHT!!!!!!

AVG RATING:

(0)

REPORT!

sign-in to rate

Eddievee104

04:17 PMJun 30 2009

Well lets see 40 million for college and 100 million for flight school. Sounds to me you were one of Madoffs bookies dumbass

AVG RATING:

(0)

REPORT!

sign-in to rate

JoeCBoyer

04:15 PMJun 30 2009

I am a retired pilot. I can remember an Airbus going down in NY City, one in the river, one in the Atlantic and now one in the Indian Ocean. When I fly it will be on a Boeing aircraft or I will stay home.

AVG RATING:

(1)

REPORT!

sign-in to rate

1 - 10 of 483

<< Previous Next 10 >>