Yemenia Aircrash - 150 lives lost again
MORONI (Reuters) – An airliner with 150 people on board belonging to Yemeni state carrier Yemenia crashed into choppy seas as it came in to land on the Indian Ocean archipelago of Comoros on Tuesday, officials said.
"The plane has crashed and we still don't know exactly where. We think it's in the area of Mitsamiouli. There were 150 passengers on board," Comoros Vice-President Idi Nadhoim told Reuters from the airport at the main island's capital Moroni.
A Paris Airport spokeswoman said a Yemenia flight left Paris on Monday morning before landing in Yemen and then taking off for Moroni.
Ibrahim Kassim, a representative from regional air security body ASECNA, said the plane had probably come down 5 to 10 km (3 to 6 miles) from the coast, and civilian and military boats had been mobilized to start searching.
"We think the crash is somewhere along its landing approach," Kassim told Reuters. "The weather is really not very favorable. The sea is very rough."
ASECNA -- the Agency for Aviation Security and Navigation in Africa and Madagascar -- covers Francophone Africa.
The town of Mitsamiouli is on the main island Grande Comore.
"There is a crash, there is a crash in the sea," said an unnamed official who answered the phone in the Yemenia office in Moroni. He declined further comment.
An airline official in Yemen declined to comment.
COMING TO LAND
Interior Minister Hamid Bourhane told Reuters the army had sent small speedboats to an area between the village of Ntsaoueni and the airport.
"At the moment we don't have any information about whether there are any survivors," he told Reuters.
A medical worker in Mitsamiouli said he had been called in.
"They have just called me to come to the hospital. They said a plane had crashed," he told Reuters.
A United Nations official at the airport, who declined to be named, said the control tower had received notification the plane was coming into land, and then lost contact with it.
Yemenia, which is 51 percent owned by the Yemeni government and 49 percent owned by the Saudi Arabian government, flies to Moroni, according to flight schedules on its Web site.
Yemenia's fleet includes two Airbus 330-200s, four Airbus 310-300s and four Boeing 737-800s, according to the site.
The Comoros covers three small volcanic islands, Grande Comore, Anjouan and Moheli, in the Mozambique channel, 300 km (190 miles) northwest of Madagascar and a similar distance east of the African mainland.
A hijacked Ethiopian Airlines Boeing 767 crashed into the sea off the Comoros islands in 1996, killing 125 of 175 passengers and crew.
(Reporting by Ahmed Ali Amir; Additional reporting by Richard Lough in Antananarivo; Pascal Lietout in Paris; Writing by Andrew Cawthorne and David Clarke; Editing by Jon Hemming)
I refuse to drink the kool-aid! -- PM
Child survives Yemeni plane crash with 153 on board
By Ahmed Ali Amir Ahmed Ali Amir – Tue Jun 30, 7:52 am ET
MORONI (Reuters) – An Airbus A310-300 from Yemen with 153 people on board, including 66 French nationals, crashed into the sea off the Indian Ocean archipelago of Comoros as it approached in bad weather early on Tuesday, officials said.
A doctor in the Comoros told Reuters a child had been plucked alive from the sea and was being taken to a medical center. The manager of the international airport in Moroni said the child was five. He said five bodies had also been found.
The Paris airports authority said 66 French nationals were aboard the plane, which was flying the final leg of a trip from Paris and Marseille to Comoros via Yemen.
A Yemeni aviation official said there were also nationals from Canada, Comoros, Ethiopia, Indonesia, Morocco, the Palestinian territories, the Philippines and Yemen on the plane.
Two French military planes and a French ship left the Indian Ocean islands of Mayotte and Reunion to search for the plane.
"A doctor from the military hospital aboard one of the rescue boats called the Mitsamiouli hospital to tell them a child had been rescued alive," Halidi Ahmed Abdou, a doctor at a medical center opened for survivors, told Reuters.
It is the second Airbus to plunge into the sea this month. An Air France Airbus A330-200 crashed into the Atlantic Ocean killing 228 people on board on June 1. A preliminary report on that crash is due on Thursday.
The Paris-Marseille-Yemen leg of the Yemenia flight was flown by an Airbus A330. In Sanaa, those passengers who were flying on to the Comoros changed onto a second Yemenia plane, the A310 that crashed.
FAULTS DETECTED
French Transport Minister Dominique Bussereau said faults had been detected during inspections in France in 2007 on the Yemenia A310, and that it had not flown to France since.
"The A310 in question was inspected in 2007 by the DGAC (French transport authorities) and they noticed a certain number of faults," he told the I-tele television channel.
"The company was not on the black list but was subject to stricter checks on our part, and was due to be interviewed shortly by the European Union's safety committee."
But Yemen's transport minister said the plane was thoroughly checked in May under Airbus supervision.
"It was a comprehensive inspection carried out in Yemen ... with experts from Airbus," Khaled Ibrahim al-Wazeer told Reuters from Sanaa. "It was in line with international standards."
The EU's Transport Commissioner Antonio Tajani said it would contact Yemenia to see what had happened and planned to propose a global blacklist of airlines deemed unsafe.
French television showed pictures of friends and relatives of the passengers weeping at Paris's Charles de Gaulle airport, many of them railing at the airline.
Airbus said it was dispatching a team of investigators to the Comoros. It said the aircraft was built in 1990 and had been used by Yemenia since 1999. Its engines were built by Pratt and Whitney, a unit of United Technologies.
"We still do not have information about the reason behind the crash, or survivors," Mohammad al-Sumairi, deputy general manager for Yemenia operations, told Reuters.
A Yemenia official said there were 142 passengers including three infants, and 11 crew. The plane was flying to Moroni, capital of Grande Comore, the main island of the archipelago.
"The weather conditions were rough; strong wind and high seas. The wind speed recorded on land at the airport was 61 kph (38 mph). There could be other factors," Sumairi said.
"We think the crash is somewhere along its landing approach," said Ibrahim Kassim from ASECNA, an aviation security agency which covers Francophone Africa. "The weather is really not very favourable. The sea is very rough."
FRENCH HELP
The French military said it had sent army and civilian medical teams, boats and divers to the crash site aboard the plane from Reunion. Comoros authorities sent small speedboats.
France and the Comoros have enjoyed close ties since the islands' independence in 1975. France estimates 200,000 people from Comoros live in mainland France, and remittances from France are an important part of the islands' economy.
A United Nations official at Moroni airport, who declined to be named, said the control tower had received notification the plane was coming in to land, and then lost contact with it.
Yemenia is 51 percent owned by Yemen and 49 percent by Saudi Arabia. Its fleet includes two Airbus 330-200s, four Airbus 310-300s and four Boeing 737-800s, according to its website.
The Comoros comprises three small volcanic islands, Grande Comore, Anjouan and Moheli, in the Mozambique channel, 300 km (190 miles) northwest of Madagascar and a similar distance east of the African mainland.
(Additional Richard Lough in Antananarivo, Inal Ersan in Dubai, David Clarke in Nairobi, Pascal Lietout, Anna Willard, Thierry Leveque and Guy Kerivel in Paris; Writing by David Clarke; Editing by Dominic Evans)
Freedom just another word, when you got nothing left to lose.
-Kris Kristofferson
let's pray and hope that there are survivors.
A flaw in the preventive maintenance program or the Pilot error.... whatever it is.... feel really sorry for those who departed....
blessed...so sad to lose lives. Wishing their families peace upon their hearts.
As far as this being a bad year for airlines...consider the death toll from driving on roads compared to airlines. The difference is that airline crashes make headlines...automobile crashed don't. Its still safer to fly than to drive.
If you pick up a starving dog and make him prosperous, he will not bite you; that is the main difference between a dog and man.
-Mark Twain-
yeah very sad :(
very sad :(
Very SAD !!
May Almighty Allah rest their souls in PEACE.
Iam sure, these cases will be another reason to put down the airline market.
~noms~
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"Before God we are all equally wise ' and equally foolish" - Albert Einstein
it's really bad news....:)
I think I would feel uncomofortable to fly on an Airbus. In recent days, I have seen too many Airbus accidents..
ye, heard this today morning - Radio !
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rMs..!!
Seems like 2009 is not good for the Airline industry in so many aspects, especially where incidents and accidents are concerned.