Yemen jet crashes in Indian Ocean

Source: BBC News

A Yemeni airliner with 150 people on board has crashed in the Comoros archipelago in the Indian Ocean, officials say.

"We don't know if there are any survivors among the 150 people on the plane," a senior government official told Reuters news agency.

The plane belonged to Yemeni state carrier Yemenia Air.

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



Read more: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/8125664.stm

the flight is IY627 from Moroni, Comoros to Sana'a, Yemen scheduled to be an Airbus A310

I quite frankly am getting paranoid, with the Air France and now this.
I'm wondering if terrorists are quietly tampering with airplanes where they've gotten people into mechanic jobs. Just remember this: if it turns out I'm right, I called it first!

50 dead Buffalo
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/13/nyregion/13crash.html

A British Airways passenger jet crashed at the London City Airport on Friday, Feb. 13th, carrying 71 passengers. The British Airways jet had a landing gear malfunction when the plane crashed on the runway in London. Fortunately there were no deaths and only one minor injury that required going to the hospital. BA Flight 8456 was on its way to London from Amsterdam when the plane's nosewheel failed during the landing.

There was one more mishap (not dramatic crash) but I can't remember what it was - I'm sure there were 3 that day.

And on Feb 25 in Amsterdam
A Turkish Airlines plane has crashed on landing at Amsterdam's Schiphol international airport, killing nine people and injuring 84, six critically. The plane, carrying 127 passengers and seven crew, crashed short of the runway near the A9 highway. It broke into three pieces, but did not catch fire. Three of those killed are crew members. Dutch officials say most of the passengers on board were Turkish.

Lots of near-misses or crashes that turn out relatively well.<\b>

Rudder could be cause of Air France crash, pilots and experts say

New York - As they work to unravel the mystery of Air France Flight 447, aviation analysts and pilots are now urging investigators to focus attention on the plane's tail fin, known as the vertical stabilizer, in addition to the design of the Airbus's computerized flight controls.

The vertical stabilizer is one of the largest intact pieces of the plane recovered so far, and the Times of London reported this week that "one of the 24 automatic messages sent from the plane minutes before it disappeared pointed to a problem in the 'rudder limiter,' a mechanism that limits how far the plane's rudder can move."

Aviation analysts note that several Airbus 300 series jets have had tail fin and rudder problems in the past. (The rudder is the flight control on the vertical stabilizer, or tail fin.)

The most recent incident was in 2005, when the rudder suddenly ripped off the stabilizer of an Airbus 310 flying at 35,000 feet from Cuba to Quebec, Canada. That plane managed to land safely.


http://www.csmonitor.com/2009/0619/p02s01-usgn.html

1) While this looks bad for Airbus, it should be kept in mind that the A310 and the A330 are drastically different aircraft, from different generations of manufacture. The A310 predates most of Airbus' innovations such as fly-by-wire, and really belongs more with the DC-9 and pre-NG versions of the 737. By current standards, it's a rather outdated plane.

2) While some people are looking at the vertical stabilizer of the Air France aircraft, it's almost mathematically impossible that it was the initial cause of the problems. The diagnostic message about the rudder limiter came in the middle of the pack of messages received in the last four minutes of the AF447 flight. Were it the cause of the crash, it would have come at the very beginning. Plus, forensic evidence indicates the aircraft broke up in flight, whereas tailfin separation generally leads to the rest of the aircraft crashing as one large unit. It seems more likely that something else (turbulence, lightning, problems with the airspeed monitors leading to undetected automated overspeed) came first, and led to structural failure of the aircraft -- one stage of which involved the tailfin and/or the rear section of the fuselage breaking off. But it almost certainly wasn't the first stage in the crash.

Or was the last message just that -- the last message before breakup, which could have occurred several minutes afterward. Or were the messages clear evidence of a catastrophic failure in process?

nm

number of crashes since.

Could be just the year for plane crashes.

Remember, there hasn't been a fatal crash for a major U.S. airline (puddle-jumpers flying for commuter airlines don't count) since November of 2001. That's pretty much an unprecedented streak for U.S. aviation. By contrast, check out sites that list air crashes by year: in the late '50s and early '60s, major airlines like United, American, and PanAm would lose at least a couple of large jetliners (Boeing 707s or Douglas DC-8s) practically every year.

technology exists now to prevent crashes.

going through all that trouble to have your work be described as an act of god kind of defeats the purpose of terrorism.

The Airbus A310 was en route from Yemen's capital Sanaa to Moroni, the capital of Comoros, and most of the passengers were Comoran, an official at Sanaa's international airport said. Moroni is about 2,900 km (1,800 miles) south of Yemen, off the east coast of Africa.

http://www.cnn.com/2009/WORLD/meast/06/29/yemen.plane.crash/index.html

The Airbus 310 plane was flying from Yemen capital Sana’a to Comoros. A company official said that most of the passengers were expatriates from Comoros who were in transit from Paris.

http://www.thaindian.com/newsportal/world-news/plane-crashes-with-150-on-board-crashes-in-indian-ocean-lead_100211130.html

:(

why take an unnecessary risk?
be safe

Source: CNN

Rescuers on Tuesday spotted the wreckage of a Yemeni jet that crashed in the Indian Ocean off the island nation of Comoros, the country's Vice President Idi Nadhoim said.

The plane, carrying more than 150 people, was en route to Moroni, the capital of Comoros, from Yemen's capital, Sanaa.

A reconnaissance plane spotted traces of the jet in waters off the town of Mitsamiouli, Nadhoim said.

"There were no sign of survivors," he said. "There are a few bodies floating and there is a lot of debris floating around."

Read more: http://www.cnn.com/2009/WORLD/meast/06/29/yemen.plane.crash/index.html

"The crash was the second involving an Airbus jet in a month."

CAIRO (AP) — A Comoros police official says a child has been rescued from the sea in the Airbus 310 crash off the Indian Ocean island.

Immigrations officer with the Comoros operations, Rachida Abdullah, says a toddler was rescued from the crash site Tuesday.

Abdullah told The Associated Press that three bodies have also been retrieved, along with debris from the plane, but that no other survivors have been recovered so far.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/jun/30/yemen-plane-crash-rescuers-bodies

A Yemeni airline which crashed into the Indian Ocean was banned from France in 2007 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.

More than 150 people were on board. A five-year-old child survived and was rescued from the ocean, while some bodies have also been recovered.

The plane flew from Yemen, but many on board began their journey in France.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/africa/8126576.stm

By SHÂN ROSS

IT WILL rank as one of the most amazing escapes in the history of aviation – a girl of 14 is the sole survivor of an Indian Ocean airliner crash in which 152 people have almost certainly died.
As rescuers rushed to the site where the Yemenia Airbus 310-300 hit the water, all they could see were bodies and debris floating on the choppy waves.

But about an hour after the wreckage was located and hope of finding survivors began to fade, a radio message came through that a child had been miraculously plucked alive from the sea.

News of the first, and so far only, survivor of the crash came in a brief radio message from a medic at the crash scene.

"A doctor from the military hospital aboard one of the rescue boats called the Mitsamiouli hospital to tell them a child had been rescued alive," said Halidi Ahmed Abdou, a doctor at a medical centre that was opened for survivors.

http://news.scotsman.com/latestnews/Miracle-girl-only-survivor-of.5415953.jp

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.

http://www.reuters.com/article/topNews/idUSTRE55T0LQ20090630?feedType=RSS&feedName=topNews