A CHILD was pulled alive from rough seas after a Yemeni Airbus A310 jet carrying 153 people crashed as it came in to land in the Indian Ocean island nation of Comoros yesterday.

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Yemenia plane crash
A Yemenia plane carrying 150 passengers disappeared in the Indian Ocean as it prepared to land in...
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It was the second time in less than a month that an Airbus had crashed into the ocean, and immediately there were calls by the EU for a worldwide blacklist of unsafe airlines.

French authorities said the Yemeni carrier had been under surveillance and that problems had been reported with the jet.

Bodies and wreckage from the Yemenia Airways flight were spotted in the sea near the archipelago's capital, Moroni.

Hopes there would be survivors among the 142 passengers and 11 crew on Flight IY 626 were realised when a five-year-old child was plucked from the sea and taken to hospital, officials said. In Yemen's capital, Sanaa, Yemenia's deputy managing director for operations, Mohammed al-Sumairi, said three bodies had been recovered. But there was no word on other survivors.

Fishermen had also found wreckage, passengers' handbags and other effects, said rescuers in Comoros.

Yemeni aviation official Mohammad Abdel Kader said it was too early to speculate on the cause of the crash."The weather was very bad ... the wind was very strong," he said.

Witnesses said they saw the jet trying to land at Moroni airport, but then disappear.

"It looked to me as though the plane was having difficulties landing," said former civil aviation chief Mohamed Yahya, adding that its engines were making a noise as though it was in trouble.

Flight IY626 had started in Paris early on Monday, with passengers boarding a more modern Airbus A330-200 for the flight via Marseille to Sanaa, where passengers switched to the Airbus A310 for the journey to Djibouti and Moroni.

Moroni international airport lost contact with the jet just before it was due to land in bad weather, said airport director Hadji Mmadi Ali.

French civil aviation officials said 66 passengers were French. Three small babies were also among the passengers. France sent two navy ships and a plane from its nearby Indian Ocean territories to help the rescue.

Airbus, which is still reeling from the crash of an Air France A330-200 into the Atlantic on June 1 with 228 people on board, set up a crisis cell and sent investigators to the Comoros.

The European plane-maker said the jet that crashed off Moroni was made in 1990 and had been operated by Yemenia since 1999.

EU Transport Commissioner Antonio Tajani called for a worldwide blacklist of unsafe airlines like that in the EU.

"If we want to achieve better safety I'm convinced that we need to have a worldwide blacklist; the European blacklist works pretty well in Europe," he said.

France's Transport Minister, Dominique Bussereau, said inspectors had noted numerous faults on the Airbus and Yemenia was being closely monitored by EU authorities, although it was not on the blacklist.

He also said the crashed aircraft had been banned from French airspace several years ago because of "irregularities".

Yemen's transport minister, Khaled al-Wazir, said the Airbus was checked in May and had no technical faults.

Airbus said the jet had accumulated about 51,900 hours in the air from 17,300 flights.

Yemenia, created in 1978, is 51 per cent owned by the Yemeni government and 49 per cent by Saudi Arabia.

AFP