Tuesday, June 30, 2009

Child survives Yemeni plane crash

A five-year-old child has been found alive, hours after a Yemeni airliner crashed in the Indian Ocean with more than 150 people on board.
Some bodies have also been recovered from the wreckage of the plane.
The Yemenia Airbus 310 flight IY626 was flying from the Yemeni capital Sanaa, but many passengers on the plane began their journey in France.
The EU voiced concern about Yemenia's safety and proposed a world blacklist of those carriers deemed unsafe.
The EU already has its own list, and its Transport Commissioner, Antonio Tajani, said such a list would be a "safety guarantee for all".
Another EU official told Reuters news agency there were concerns about the airline's "incomplete reporting procedure and incomplete follow-up" following 2007 tests on the aircraft which crashed, but that its record was improving.
RECENT AIR CRASHES

1 June: An Air France Airbus plane travelling from Rio de Janeiro to Paris disappears in the Atlantic with 228 people on board
20 May: An Indonesian army C-130 Hercules transport plane crashes into a village on eastern Java, killing at least 97 people
12 February: A plane crashes into a house in Buffalo, New York, killing all 49 people on board and one person on the ground

Yemeni Transport Minister Khaled Ibrahim al-Wazeer told Reuters that the plane had undergone a thorough inspection and conformed to international standards.

Reports say the plane was due in the Comoros capital Moroni at about 0230 (2230GMT on Monday). Most of the passengers had travelled to Sanaa from Paris or Marseille on a different aircraft.
The flight on to Moroni, on the island of Njazidja (Grande Comore), was also thought to have made a stop in Djibouti.
There were more than 150 people on board, including three babies and 11 crew.
 An airport source told AFP news agency that 66 of the passengers were French, although many are thought to have dual French-Comoran citizenship.
This is the second air tragedy this month involving large numbers of French citizens.
On 1 June an Air France Airbus 330 travelling from Rio de Janeiro to Paris plunged into the Atlantic, killing all 228 people on board.
Relatives' anger
Gen Bruno de Bourdoncle de Saint-Salvy, French naval commander in the Indian Ocean, said the plane came down about 15km (eight nautical miles) north of the Comoran coast.
They put us aboard wrecks, they put us aboard coffins, that's where they put us - it's slaughter
Relative at Paris airport

A search is under way, with the French military assisting with the operation.
As well as the rescued child, five bodies and some wreckage of the plane have been recovered.
"The weather conditions were rough; strong wind and high seas," Yemenia official Mohammad al-Sumairi told Reuters news agency.
The three Comoros islands are about 300km (190 miles) northwest of Madagascar in the Mozambique channel.
A resident near the airport told the BBC about 100 people were trying to get into the airport to find out more information, but without much success.
Relatives also gathered at Paris Roissy Charles de Gaulle airport and Marseille Marignane airport to wait for news, some expressing anger at the state of the airline's planes.
"They put us aboard wrecks, they put us aboard coffins. That's where they put us. It's slaughter. It's slaughter," one relative in Paris told French TV.
The airline Yemenia is 51% owned by the Yemeni government and 49% by the Saudi government.
In 1996, a hijacked Ethiopian airliner came down in the same area - most of the 175 passengers and crew were killed.


Map of aircraft's route

0 comments:

Post a Comment