14-Year Old Girl Survives Indian Ocean Crash

Paris, FREarlier reports of a 5-year-old boy surviving the plane crash involving an Airbus A310-300 en route from Yemen to the African Island nation of Comoros, have been corrected. Officials now report that the survivor is a 14-year-old girl, Bahia Bariki. The girl, a citizen of both Comoros and France, was traveling to the city of Moroni, the capital of Comoros, for her summer holiday.

The Yemania Airlines plane carrying 153 people crashed into deep ocean off the east coast of Africa early in the morning on June 30. So far the planes in flight data recorder or "Black Box" have not been located. The cause of the crash has not been determined, but weather appears to have been a factor. Reports suggest that the winds over the Indian Ocean at the time the plane went down were gusting at around 40 miles per hour, and seas were heavy.

The plane's safety record is being questioned, after it was discovered that the same plane had been inspected by the French civil aviation authority two years ago, who found a number of faults on the plane. Furthermore, the very same A310 jet was banned from French airspace because of 'irregularities' and concerns over Yemania Airlines safety record.

Yemania Airlines is not on the list of banned airlines, kept by the European Union, however ABC news is reporting that the EU safety committee was due to hold hearings on the airline shortly.

ABC News is reporting that Farid Soilihi, spokesman for SOS Comoros Travel, an organization formed to call attention to the unsafe travel conditions to the African nation, told France 2 TV in Marseille that the planes are not safe. "These are flights on which there are no seat belts, or they are faulty. The restrooms are faulty," he said. Last August the Comoro community in Marseille organized a demonstration to draw attention to the reportedly terrible condition of the planes, and to alert authorities to the risk for disaster.

Currently, the search is ongoing, 5 bodies have been pulled from the ocean. Airbus will be sending a team of specialists to the tiny African nation for further investigation.
Today's crash is the second this month involving an Airbus aircraft. On June 1st an Air France plane went down off the coast of Brazil, killing everyone on board. There is, as yet no conclusive cause for that plane crash, although investigators are working on a theory that the plane broke up in mid-air. The location of debris fields, together with the location of bodies, appears to support that theory.

The Airbus aircrafts involved in both crashes are some of the most technologically advanced planes in the skies. However, there have been problems. Two Quantas flights narrowly avoided disaster in recent years after automatic sensors and computers fed erroneous data to the pilots. And Airbus uses new, state-of-the-art composite materials in certain areas of its planes. The failure of a composite part was said to have played a role in a previous crash of an Airbus plane.