Yemenia Flight 626

Yemenia Flight 626
	The plane crashed in 2005 in Paris
Accident summary
Accident type	Crash due to loss of control; Stall
place	Off the Comoros
date	June 30, 2009
Fatalities	152
Survivors	1
Injured	1
Aircraft
Aircraft type	Airbus A310-300
operator	Yemenia
Mark	7O-ADJ
Surname	IY626
Departure airport	Sanaa Airport
Destination airport	Prince Said Ibrahim International Airport
Passengers	142
crew	11
	Lists of aviation accidents

Yemenia flight 626 ( IY 626 for short ) was an international scheduled flight of the Yemeni airline Yemenia from Sanaa in Yemen to Moroni in the Comoros , which took place on June 30, 2009 with 142 passengers and 11 crew members around 15 kilometers from the main island of Grande Comore in the India Ocean crashed. The crash happened at 1:50 a.m. local time (22:50 UTC ) during the approach .

Most of the passengers had started their flight in Paris . The flight from Paris to Sanaa was carried out in an A330-200 . In Sanaa, the passengers switched to the Airbus A310 for the onward flight to Moroni, which then crashed on runway 20 at Moroni Airport. According to Yemenia, most of the passengers came from France or the Comoros.

Flight number

In the European media in particular, the number IY749 was initially often mentioned instead of the flight number IY626. IY749 is a scheduled flight Paris – Marseille – Sanaa. IY626 is the connecting flight Sanaa - Djibouti - Moroni . Since most of the passengers on the flight came from Paris or Marseille , they had booked the flight under number IY749.

plane

The Airbus A310-324 with the serial number 535 was delivered to Air Liberté on May 30, 1990 and put into service.

Yemenia took over the aircraft in September 1999 and has since operated it under the aircraft registration 7O-ADJ. In total, the aircraft had completed around 51,900 flight hours in 17,300 flights. The aircraft was equipped with two Pratt & Whitney PW4152 turbines.

History of the aircraft
date	Airplane license plate	operator
May 30, 1990	F-CHEJ	Air Liberté
Sept 23, 1996	F-CHEJ	to the leasing company ILFC returned
Feb 8, 1997	VR-BQU	Aerocancun
March 1997	VR-BQU	Adorna Airways
Nov 3, 1997	VR-BQU	Aerocancun
May 1998	N535KR	returned to the leasing company ILFC
June 26, 1998	PP-PSE	Passaredo Transportes Aéreos
Sept 1999	7O-ADJ	Yemenia

During an inspection in 2007, the French authorities found the aircraft to be defective, and it was no longer used in French airspace. The Yemeni Transport Minister Khaled Ibrahim al-Wazeer made it clear after the crash that the aircraft had been inspected under the supervision of Airbus in May and that it met international standards.

Search, rescue and recovery

According to the Comorian police, the island state does not have the ability to carry out a search and rescue operation at sea. France sent two planes and a ship to the crash site from Mayotte and La Réunion . The youth Bahia Bakari was rescued after spending eight hours swimming on a part of the wreck. Corpses and wreckage were sighted. On the morning of July 5, five days after the plane crashed, the acoustic signals from the flight recorders could be located.