Second Airbus Crash in One Month

Second Airbus crash in one month

A fourteen-year old girl is the sole survivor of a Yemenite plane crash near the Comoro Islands, an archipelago off the south coast of Africa, near Madagascar. The girl is exhausted, but unhurt. The Comorian government spokesman Abdourahim Said Bacar said it was a true miracle.

The girl, Bakari Baya, was travelling with her mother and has been moved to a hospital on the Comores. She’s feeling quite well. For hours, she held onto a piece of wreckage and was picked up by a boat searching for survivors off the coast.

The plane she was on, an Airbus A310, crashed Tuesday morning in the Indian Ocean off the Comores.

No other survivors have been found so far. The plane was carrying 153 souls in total: 142 passengers and 11 crewmembers.

The crash has been located around 20 kilometres (about 12 miles) north of the islands, in between Madagascar and Mozambique. A team of divers is on its way to recover the wreckage. The French President Sarkozy has ordered several French ships to help in the salvage.

Bad weather

The head of the Moroni airport said that the plane lost contact with air traffic controllers just five minutes before landing. He also suggested that bad weather could have been the cause of the crash.

Flight IY626 had been cleared to land by the air traffic controllers, but never made it to the airport. Most of the 142 passengers on board of the A310 of the Yemenite airliner Yemenia, were looking forward to a holiday. A lot of the passengers were French citizens, looking to spend their holiday on the archipelago. The French government declared that 66 French passengers were aboard the plane.

Tuesday morning, the plane commenced the approach above the main island Grand Comoro. But something went wrong when the planed turned onto final approach to the airport of Moroni-Hahaia, which is located near the beach. The 19-year old plane, which failed a security check in France two years ago, crashed into the Indian Ocean.

One witness claims he saw the plane hit the water spinning around, while another witness says she saw flames coming out of the plane. Fact is that at the moment, there were heavy wind gushes, which are also hampering the search party.

Bodies in the sea

Soon after the crash, bodies were spotted off the coast of the Comoro Islands. Several parts of the plane have already been recovered, including the cockpit.

Three Comorian ships are en-route to the crash location. The search is being supervised by both Comorian and French government, as the Comores are a former French colony. France has sent two marine ships and one plane carrying divers and medical staff.

French tourists

According to French information, an Airbus A330 of Yemenia Air left Paris Monday morning carrying 143 passengers and 11 crewmembers. After a stop in Sanaa, Yemen, the passengers boarded the A310.

The French plane also stopped in Marseille, where it may have picked up several passengers and crewmembers. Marseille has a large Comorian community.

In France, school holidays have begun this week, and several families may have been aboard the plane.

Second tragedy this month

The Airbus accident is the second one in just a month. The first of June, an Airbus of Air France crashed in the Atlantic, killing all 228 aboard, of whom a lot of French.

Brazilian ships have recovered over 51 bodies and 600 pieces of wreckage so far.