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Yemenia Airlines Plane Crashes Off Comoros; One Survivor Rescued

Where: Comoros
June 30, 2009 at 10:32 AM | by | Comment (1)

We don't know about you, but we're tired of hearing about all the deaths in the last month; from the tragedy of Air France Flight 447 to the passing of famous faces like Farrah Fawcett, Michael Jackson and yes, even Billy Mays. Perhaps the world joins us in this exhaustion over bad news, because yesterday night's crash of a Yemenia Airlines flight off the coast of the Comoros Islands hasn't unleashed a media frenzy.

To fill in the details, the Yemenia Airbus 310, originating in Paris, was en route from Yemen's capital Sanaa to Moroni Airport in the Comoros crashed into the ocean after making a first attempt at landing. The crash was so close to the island that it was witnessed from land, and yet a police official admitted "we really have no sea rescue capabilities."

Nearly 4-5 hours later, rescue boats began finding debris from the airliner and bodies of the crash victims. Up until this morning, it was believed that none of the 153 passengers had survived, but then a toddler was pulled from the ocean and taken to a hospital.

Of course since the crash happened in a remote area and involved an airline already under safety watch by the EU, the press coverage hasn't been as alarming as it was for Air France. Hope seems to have been lost almost immediately, when it shouldn't be. Such a large loss of life can't be shrugged off, and we hope that the Yemenia site, now that they've found the alive child, gets increased assistance today just in case there are others.

Now we hope we don't have to report on any more plane crashes for a long time, and our thoughts are with the families of the victims.

Related Stories:
· Child found alive after plane crashes in sea [CNN]
· Timeline of Flight 626 [BBC]
· Tragedies Coverage [Jaunted]

[Photo: Wikimedia; Map: BBC]

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Return to » Yemenia Airlines Plane Crashes Off Comoros; One Survivor Rescued


2009 airline fatalities not as bad as they seem

It would seem that there have been a lot airline crashes recently - specifically of A310's in Oceans... but a quick look at the data shows that fatalities are about in line with what we've seen in the past 10 years... funny they're so close together though - there's an article over at economixt that details the fatality data for this crash, as well as the past 10 years - http://www.economixt.com/2009/06/yemenia-air-flight-626-and-2009-airline-fatalities
Sean Hurley on June 30, 2009 at 11:22 AM #Permalink

Return to » Yemenia Airlines Plane Crashes Off Comoros; One Survivor Rescued

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