'Numerous faults' on crashed jet
2009-06-30 12:12
Paris - French inspectors had noted numerous faults on the Yemenia jet that crashed on Tuesday with 153 people on board and the company was being closely monitored by EU authorities, France's transport minister said.
"The A310 in question had been inspected in France in 2007 by the DGAC (French civil aviation authority) and a certain number of faults had been noted," Dominique Bussereau.
"The plane had not since then reappeared in our country," he told i-tele news.
"The company was not on the blacklist (of airlines banned from European airspace) but was being subjected to closer inspection by us and was due to soon be heard by the security committee of the European Union," he said.
Activists in Marseille said on Tuesday that passengers are packed in like cattle on flights between Yemen and the Comoros on planes that fail to meet safety criteria.
The campaign group called "SOS voyage aux Comores" (SOS Comoros Travel) called on French authorities to act to stop a repeat of the crash.
"Flights between Sanaa (in Yemen) and Moroni (in the Comoros) are carried out by cowboy operators," spokesperson Farid Soilihi told AFP at the airport in the southern French city which has 80 000 Comoran residents.
"They treat people like cattle, they pile them in, they don't respect timetables, there are always technical problems," he said.
He added that his group had last year held a protest march at Marseille airport to denounce conditions on these flights.
The Yemenia flight started in a Paris airport on Monday when an Airbus A330-200 aircraft took off for Marseille and then on to the Yemeni capital Sanaa. There passengers changed to an Airbus A310 and departed for the Comoros via Djibouti.
The twin engine plane crashed early on Tuesday off the Comoros islands in the Indian Ocean.
Airbus said the crashed plane was made in 1990 and had been operated by Yemenia since 1999.
It had accumulated approximately 51 900 flight hours in some 17 300 flights, the France-based planemaker said in a statement which added that the firm was sending a team of experts to help with the crash probe.
Airbus said 214 A310s were in service with 41 operators across the globe.
- SAPA
