Yemenia Says Plane Crashed Over the Indian Ocean

June 30 (Bloomberg) — Yemen’s national airline said one of its planes with 153 passengers and crew on board crashed today near the Comoros Islands over the Indian Ocean.

The Airbus SAS A310 plane was 15 minutes from landing in the Comoros Islands when it disappeared over the ocean, a Yemenia official, Taha al-Ashwal, said in a telephone interview from the Yemeni capital, Sana’a.

It wasn’t immediately known if anyone survived, al-Ashwal said. “We lost contact at 1 a.m. and have had no news since then,” he said. Some bodies were recovered from the ocean, Agence France-Presse reported, citing Yemen’s civil aviation authorities.

The flight, carrying 142 passengers and 11 crew members, according to Yemenia, originated in Paris and made stopovers in Marseilles and Sana’a. Most of the passengers were of Comorian origin from France, the airline said. The Comoros Islands are an archipelago located off the southeastern coast of Africa, northwest of Madagascar. About 200,000 Comorians live in France, according to the French government.

Yemenia operates Airbus A330-200 and A310-300 as well as Boeing 737-800 aircraft, according to its Web site. The airline had a flight from Sana’a yesterday at 8 p.m. local time and was due to arrive in Moroni in Comoros at 11:59 p.m., according to its flight schedules.

An Airbus spokeswoman at the planemaker’s headquarters in Toulouse, France, confirmed that the aircraft involved was an A310. No other information was immediately available. A310s are no longer in production.

Calls to the government in Comoros and the airport in Moroni weren’t answered.

The Comoros Islands are divided into an independent nation, the Union of the Comoros, and the island of Mayotte, a French territory which is claimed by the Union of the Comoros.

http://www.reuters.com/article/topNews/idUSTRE55T10I20090630