An Airbus A310-300 flying from Yemen plunged into the Indian Ocean killing all but one passenger – a 13-year-old girl called Bahia Bakari. (She was identified in some reports as Bahia Bariki or Bakari Baya.)
Bakari holds dual citizenship for France and Comoros. The girl, who was traveling with her mother at the time of the crash, was found floating 10 miles from the Comoros islands. She described to her father, who was not on the doomed flight, how she clung to wreckage in the dark to stay afloat. She was to spend her summer in Moroni, the capital of Comoros. She is said to be recovering well in hospital suffering from cuts to her face and a fractured collarbone.
The teen described her ordeal: “We saw the plane fall in the water. I found myself in the water. I was hearing people speak but I couldn’t see anyone. I was in the dark. I couldn’t see anything. Daddy, I couldn’t swim very well. I grabbed on to something but I don’t know what.”
One of her rescuers described the moment they pulled her out of the ocean: “We tried to throw a life buoy. She could not grab it. I had to jump in the water to get her…She was shaking, shaking. We put four covers on her. We gave her hot, sugary water. We simply asked her name, village.”
The plane on crashed on the last leg of a flight from Paris that began on a different plane. The airliner had 153 people on board and crashed in bad weather. Faults were found on the plane by French transport authorities in 2007. The plane was then banned from flying in Europe.
However, several passengers with experience flying with Yemenia say the airline routinely changes planes as soon as they fly outside Europe – as happened in this case. Operators Yemenia Air now face being blacklisted by the EU.
It’s the second Airbus to crash in June 2009.
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on June 30, 2009
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