France 'banned Yemen crash plane'

Yemeni authorities said the plane conformed to international standards

A Yemeni airline which crashed into the Indian Ocean was banned from France because of "irregularities", France's transport minister has said.

Dominique Bussereau told parliament of ongoing concerns about the safety record of the Yemenia Airbus 310.

One young person is said to have been rescued from the ocean, the only known survivor of the 153 people on board.

The plane was heading from Yemen to the Comoros islands, but many on board began their journey in France.

Most had flown on a different Yemenia aircraft from Paris or Marseille before boarding flight IY626 in Sanaa, the capital of Yemen.

The crash was the second involving an Airbus aircraft in recent weeks. 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.

That tragedy also involved large numbers of French citizens.

'Never again'

In Paris, Mr Bussereau told legislators that the Yemenia Airbus 310 which crashed was not permitted to fly into France, and raised concerns about the transfer of passengers from a plane classed as safe to one which crashed into the ocean.

"A few years ago, we banned this plane from national territory because we believed it presented a certain number of irregularities in its technical equipment," Mr Bussereau told parliament.

FLIGHT IY626 Airbus A310-300 aircraft, built in 1990 153 people on board, including 66 French nationals Flight originated in Paris, using modern Airbus A330-200 Stopped in Marseille before flying to Sanaa Passengers moved to A310-300 Stopover in Djibouti Comorans 'warned of flight safety' 'We are praying for a miracle' In pictures: Yemeni plane crash Timeline of Flight IY626

"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."

However, a spokesman for the airline said poor weather was more likely to have been a factor in the crash than the condition of the plane.

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

The crash prompted the European Union to highlight its own concerns about Yemenia's safety record, proposing 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 that crashed, but that its record was improving.

Anger and grief

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. Some 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.

Gen Bruno de Bourdoncle de Saint-Salvy, French naval commander in the Indian Ocean, said the plane had come 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 Ties that bind: Comoros and France EU wants world blacklist Air disasters timeline

A search is under way, with the French military assisting with the operation, which is battling strong winds and high seas.

Initial reports said that a five-year-old child was found alive in the ocean, but later information suggested the child may have been older.

Five bodies and some wreckage of the plane have also been recovered.

The three Comoros islands are about 300km (190 miles) north-west of Madagascar in the Mozambique channel.

A resident living near the airport told the BBC that about 100 people were trying to get into the building to find out more information, but without much success.

Radio stations in Moroni have stopped playing music and are broadcasting passages from the Koran as a mark of respect for those killed, a local reporter, Abubacar Omar, told the BBC.

The government had appealed for people to stay calm, he said, with key politicians returning to the Comoros from overseas to take charge of the recovery and rescue operation.

"Everybody here is talking about only one thing - the crash", another local journalist, Abdul Rahman Bar Amir, said.

"There are groups of people huddled everywhere, talking. Nobody seems to know what is going on. All we can do is wait for information. Nobody is eating, nobody is drinking. All we are doing is waiting."

In France, relatives also gathered at Paris' Roissy Charles de Gaulle airport and at Marseille Marignane airport to wait for news.

Some expressed 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.

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