Sole Comoros crash survivor returns home to France

PARIS - The only known survivor from the crash of a Yemenia Airbus A310 near the Comoros islands, 12-year-old Bahiya Bakary, arrived at Le Bourget airport near Paris Thursday.

The “miracle girl”, as she has been dubbed, was accompanied on the flight by French Junior Minister for Development Alain Joyandet and was greeted on the tarmac by her father, Kassim Bakary, and other family members.

Bahiya was immediately taken to a Paris hospital for treatment of her injuries, which include a fractured collarbone and a number of burns.

The girl, who is a French citizen of Comoran origin, turns 13 next month. She spent nearly 12 hours in the water after the crash, clinging to a piece of wreckage while around her other survivors lost their battle for life.

“I was just hanging on,” she told her father during their first telephone conversation after the crash. “I heard people around me talking in the darkness. After a while I didn’t hear any talking any more.”

The teenager’s survival is all the more remarkable since, according to her father, she is unable to swim.

Joyandet said he was astonished by her “physical strength and absolutely incredibly morale”.

The Airbus A310 was carrying 142 passengers and a crew of 11 when it plunged into the Indian Ocean Tuesday in bad weather.

Relatives of the victims have alleged that the plane was unsafe and should never have been allowed to fly.

The A310 was banned from landing in France in 2007 after French Civil Aviation Authority inspectors detected a number of irregularities.

However, a Yemenia company official said on Wednesday the plane’s pilot did not issue a distress signal or report any mechanical problems.

Hassan al-Houthi, head of the Yemenia technical department, told reporters in Sana’a the pilot “did not even have time to make an emergency call”, suggesting that the weather, rather than a mechanical problem, caused the crash.

But the controversy over the condition of the aircraft has moved French Junior Minister for Transport Dominique Bussereau to call for the establishment of a worldwide “black list” of carriers who fly unsafe planes.

“We have noticed, unfortunately, that in general the creation of a European black list… has led carriers in some distant countries to use the best aircraft to serve Europe,” Bussereau said in an interview published Thursday in the daily Le Figaro.

Planes that are less well-maintained are used for other destinations, he said. “I therefore ask for the creation of a global black list.”

Bussereau also said that after the 2007 inspection of the A310 that crashed, “some 20 observations were passed on to Yemenia” about the state of the aircraft.

Defects found included insufficient pressure to work the emergency exit doors, material in the plane’s hold that was inadequately fastened, oxygen tanks that were not fastened down and that the plane’s papers were not up-to-date, he said.

“Since then, the company has assured us that it repaired the various defects,” Bussereau said. “I cannot confirm this since the plane has not been on French soil in two years. That will be up to the investigation to determine.”