Airbus A310-300 from Yemen crashed with 153 aboard

News added by Muhammad Kashif under Airline News

An Airbus A310-300 from Yemen with 153 people on board, including 66 French nationals, crashed into the sea as it approached the Indian Ocean archipelago of Comoros in bad weather early on Tuesday, officials said. Some bodies were recovered from the wreck of the Yemenia plane, said Abdul-Rahman Abdul-Qader, undersecretary of Yemen’s aviation authority. The airline said one survivor had been rescued from the sea.

The Paris airports authority said 66 French nationals were aboard the plane, which was flying the final leg of a flight taking passengers from Paris and Marseille to Comoros via Yemen. A large number of Comoros nationals were also on board. Two French military planes and a French ship left the Indian Ocean islands of Mayotte and Reunion to search for the plane.

"The planes have seen debris at the supposed point of impact," Ibrahim Kassim, an official at the regional air security body ASECNA, told Reuters. It is the second Airbus to plunge into the sea this month, following an Air France Airbus A330-200 that crashed into the Atlantic Ocean killing 228 people on board on June 1. A preliminary report on that crash is due on Thursday. The Paris-Marseille-Yemen leg of the Yemenia flight was flown by an Airbus A330. In Sanaa, those passengers who were flying on to the Comoros changed onto a second Yemenia plane, the A310 that crashed.

Yemenia has a hotline number available for families for all matters concerning the Yemenia crash. Families of the doomed plane’s passengers can contact Yemeina airways at 00967 1 250833.

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