Child Rescued From Crashed Yemeni Airliner; EU Calls For Worldwide Blacklist Of Unsafe Airlines

(RTTNews) - A Yemeni airliner with 153 persons aboard crashed in the Indian Ocean in the early hours of Tuesday, prompting the European Union (EU | Quote | Chart | News | PowerRating) to call for a worldwide blacklist of unsafe airlines.

A five-year-old child was rescued from the Airbus 310 that drowned in the Indian Ocean near the Comoros Islands while flying from the Yemeni capital Sanaa to the Comoros capital Moroni, reports quoting officials of the airliner and the government of Yemen said.

There was no word on other survivors. Reports said three bodies and some wreckage were retrieved by rescue workers. Flight IY626, a connecting flight from Paris, was scheduled to land at Moroni airport around 2.30 a.m. local time Tuesday, when it crashed between 15 and 20 kilometers off the north of Grande Comore island.

The Indian Ocean archipelago of Comoros Islands is located between Madagascar and Mozambique, off the coast of south-eastern Africa.

Yemeni civil aviation officials said they could not provide any reason for the accident and the flight data recorder (black box) was not found.

The weather was very bad and the wind was very strong as the plane was landing, it is said.

66 passengers were French, who began their journey in France and boarded the plane at the Yemeni capital.

Anxious relatives of passengers are waiting at Paris airport, while the French military is assisting in the search operation.

Comoran rescue vessels reached the site of the crash, and divers searched the water for the plane after pieces of wreckage were seen floating, said Abdillah Mougni, secretary-general of the Ministry of Transport, in Moroni.

Two French naval vessels and military transport planes are also on the rescue mission.

Comoran government spokesman Abdourahim Said Bacar quoted a witness as saying that she saw flames coming from the aircraft before crashing.

Fishermen reportedly saw the plane crash off the coast shortly after flight controllers lost contact with it around 1:51 a.m. (2351 GMT Monday), shortly before it was scheduled to land.

The passengers are believed to be mostly Comorians living in France, who were returning home for either holidays or for weddings. Most of them had dual citizenship, reports said.

While Yemeni Transport Minister Khaled Ibrahim al-Wazeer insisted that the plane had undergone a thorough check and conformed to international standards, reports quoting EU officials said, however, there were concerns about the airline's "incomplete reporting procedure and incomplete follow-up" and the company was being closely monitored by EU authorities.

France's transport minister Dominique Bussereau said that French inspectors had noted numerous faults on the crashed plane.

The crash occurred less than a month after an Air France Airbus 320 flying from Rio de Janeiro to Paris crashed into the Atlantic, killing all the 228 persons on board.

Following Tuesday's crash, EU Transport Commissioner Antonio Tajani said he would propose setting up a world-wide blacklist of airlines deemed to be unsafe. The EU already has its own list.

"If we want to achieve better safety I'm convinced that we need to have a world-wide blacklist, the European blacklist works pretty well in Europe," he told reporters in Brussels, adding: "It would be a safety guarantee for all."

He said the airline previously met EU safety checks, and so was not on the bloc's blacklist. But, he added, a full investigation was being started amid questions why passengers were put on another jet in the Yemeni capital of Sanaa.

The EU's blacklist, which is regularly updated, contains the names of more than 200 airlines or firms of concern which are either banned from operating in Europe or only allowed under strict restrictions.

However, the European control was not applied when the Yemenia switched from its original flight, an Airbus A330-200 aircraft that started from a Paris airport Monday, to an Airbus A310 at Sanaa. There passengers changed planes and left for the Comoros via Djibouti.

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