Plane crashes off Comoros with 150 on board

[fgl]

Plane crashes off Comoros with 150 on board

http://sg.rd.yahoo.com/partners/reuters/SIG=112kft22t/*http://www.online.reuters.com/
Reuters - Tuesday, June 30 By Ahmed Ali Amir


MORONI - An airliner with 150 people on board belonging to Yemeni state carrier Yemenia crashed in the Indian Ocean archipelago of Comoros Tuesday, a senior government official said.
"We don't know if there are any survivors among the 150 people on the plane," Comoros vice-president Idi Nadhoim told Reuters from the airport at the main island's capital Moroni.
Nadhoim said the accident happened in the early hours of Tuesday, but could not give any more details.
"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.
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.
1996 CRASH
Yemenia's fleet includes two Airbus 330-200s, four Airbus 310-300s and four Boeing 737-800s, according to the site.
The location of the crash was not immediately known, but a medical worker in the town of Mitsamiouli, on the main island Grande Comore, said he had been called into the local hospital.
"They have just called me to come to the hospital. They said a plane had crashed," he told Reuters.
A Comoran police source said the plane was believed to have come down in the sea. "We really have no sea rescue capabilities," he said.
The Comoros covers three small volcanic islands, Grande Comore, Anjouan and Moheli, in the Mozambique channel, 300 km 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

 

[Dime]

This year and the previous is just the worse of them all.People dying and global crisis one after another.

 

[Lovehurts]

Year 2009 is turning out to be a damn bloody shitty one.

 

[babyjosef17]

Year 2009 is turning out to be a damn bloody shitty one.

OMG, now that you mention it, I do remember watching some psychic guy who predicted 2009 to be bloody. 6 months later his prediction is coming true. Then again, say something in the begning of the year and eventually it will come true, no need to be physic lol.

I start now, I predict 2010 to be hot. :twisted:

 

[Lovehurts]

Babyjosef - where did you watch that thingy? Yeah, everyone can make predictions & most will happen especially if those people predicted sensible things. So yeah.

And what do you mean 2010 will be hot? Weather wise you mean, la.

 

[babyjosef17]

It was a local TV show back home. This particular show has a regular physic guest every year and will share his predictions.

Ahehehe. It's just like that. 2010 will be hot. This way it will be open for interpretation so when 2010 comes and something happens that is related to the word hot, then my prediction has come true. lol

 

[Lovehurts]

Josef - ahh...ok. Which country exactly?
Yea, smart of you to just make it as general as possible. "I predict 2010 will be hot!!"

Okay, my turn! I predict that 2010 will be an even worse year for the world's economy!

 

[snuffleupagus]

erm i predict 2010 will be better for the economy!

 

[Anirudh]

I find it very disheartening that this Yemeni Airlines crash wasn't as hugely publicized as the Air France one. Why?

At least i hope the same amount of effort is put in into the rescue operation

 

[Vocalistman]

That's 3 major airplane accidents in a row. First is the Air France case, then there's the recent Air India crash and now this?

 

[fgl]

That's 3 major airplane accidents in a row. First is the Air France case, then there's the recent Air India crash and now this?

lETS NOT FORGET THE tURKISH aIRLINES CRASH IN aMSTERDAM ...

WTF HAPPENING TO AIRLINES MAN??!!!

 

[Vaiyen]

I find it very disheartening that this Yemeni Airlines crash wasn't as hugely publicized as the Air France one. Why?

At least i hope the same amount of effort is put in into the rescue operation

obvious bias in the media. When we Asians die, not so important la~ =D

 

[fgl]

Girl found alive after Comoros plane crash

http://sg.rd.yahoo.com/partners/reuters/SIG=112kft22t/*http://www.online.reuters.com/

​

MORONI - 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 14-year-old girl was found alive in the sea, Comoros Communications Minister Abdourahim Said Bakar said. Earlier reports had said the rescued child was five.
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.
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 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."
"The question we are asking ... is whether you can collect people in a normal way on French territory and then put them in a plane that does not ensure their security. We do not want this to happen again," he said.
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 suspended permission for Yemenia to maintain EU-registered planes in February after it failed a set of audit inspections, the EU's aviation safety agency told Reuters in Brussels.
The move would not have affected the doomed Airbus A310 plane since it was registered in Yemen. But it provides further evidence of European concerns over the airline's operations after the EU Commission said the plane which crashed had sparked an EU inquiry two years ago.
The EU's Transport Commissioner Antonio Tajani said it would contact Yemenia and planned to propose a global blacklist of airlines deemed unsafe.

 

[rylche]

This year has not exactly been the best for the world, and also for me.