Yemenia Flight 626

The aircraft was an Airbus A310-324 twin-engine jetliner, registration 7O-ADJ, manufactured in 1990 as serial number 535. It was in service for 19 years and 3 months, and had accumulated 53,587 flight hours on 18,129 flight cycles at the time of the accident. Dominique Bussereau, the French Secretary of State for Transport, reported that the plane was inspected in 2007 by the French Directorate General for Civil Aviation and found to have a number of faults; since then, however, the aircraft had not returned to France, so it was never again inspected by the same authority. ==Flight history==

Most of the passengers originated from Paris, where they had boarded Yemenia Flight 749 (an Airbus A330-200). There was a stopover at Marseille Provence Airport in Marseille, France, where additional passengers and crew boarded. After arriving at Sanaa International Airport in Sanaa, Yemen, passengers transferred to an Airbus A310 for Flight 626, which was due to arrive at Prince Said Ibrahim International Airport in Moroni, Comoros, at 2:30 am local time on 30 June. Captain Hajeb had been working for Yemenia since 1989 and became an A310 captain in 2005. He had 7,936 flight hours, including 5,314 hours on the Airbus A310. Hajeb had previously flown to Moroni 25 times. First officer Atef had been with the airline since 1980, and he was qualified to fly the Airbus A310 in 2004. Atef had 3,641 flight hours, with 3,076 on the Airbus A310 and had previously flown to Moroni 13 times. ==Accident==

The crash occurred at night, off the north coast of Grande Comore, Comoros, in the Indian Ocean several minutes from the airport. An unnamed United Nations official at the airport said that the control tower had received a notification that the plane was approaching to land before losing contact. An unseasonably strong cold front had moved through the Comoros Islands, bringing winds gusting to and conditions favorable for light to moderate turbulence. Yemeni civil aviation deputy chief Mohammed Abdul Qader said the wind speed was at the time the aircraft was landing. This was the third accident for Yemenia; the previous two were runway excursions with no fatalities, although one aircraft was written off. ==Search and recovery==

According to the Comoran police, the nation possesses no sea rescue capabilities. Two French military aircraft and a vessel began the formal search for Flight 626. The wreckage was spotted off the coast of the town of Mitsamiouli, including a few bodies and large amounts of floating debris in the ocean. She had been holding on to wreckage for 13 hours. Bakari had been traveling with her mother, who did not survive. On 5 July 2009, the signals from the aircraft's flight recorders were detected. The French oceanographic vessel Beautemps-Beaupré arrived at the Comoros on 15 July 2009, and by 23 July 2009 had completed a mapping of the ocean floor around the crash area, which helped pinpoint the exact location of the recorders. Due to the great depth of the recorders' current location, the French navy had announced that it would employ underwater robots for the recovery operation, which began in August 2009. The flight data recorder (FDR) was eventually recovered on 28 August from the Indian Ocean at a depth of , while the cockpit voice recorder (CVR) was recovered on 29 August. ==Investigation==

The National Civil Aviation and Meteorological Agency (ANACM) of the Comoros was in charge of the investigation. The French Bureau of Enquiry and Analysis for Civil Aviation Safety (BEA) sent an investigative team, accompanied by Airbus specialists, to assist in the investigation of the causes. Yemen also sent a technical team to Moroni, while a committee, headed by the Yemeni Minister of Transport, was formed. The BEA noted that due to corrosion damage on the memory cards, not all of the data from the CVR could be recovered. The preliminary findings of the investigation pointed to pilot error as the cause of the accident, bringing objections from the Comoros and Yemeni authorities. In November 2009, Yemenia announced that they were looking for a third party to investigate the accident, accusing the French of attacking Yemenia "day and night" and of "harassment". Yemenia stated that the investigation was "affecting the reputation of Yemen". In 2011 the BEA criticized the Comorian authorities, saying that they are not releasing the report in a timely enough manner. On 25 June 2013, the Comoros investigative commission director Bourhane Ahmed Bourhane announced that "the accident was due to inappropriate action by the crew" during "an unstabilised manoeuvre." A group of victims' family members called for a demonstration in Paris on 28 June 2013 to protest the final report. According to the Yemen Post, Yemen suspects that the plane was taken down, despite a lack of any evidence indicating foul play. The investigation determined that the accident was caused by the inappropriate actions of the crew that led to a stall from which the aircraft did not recover. The approach was unstabilized, triggering various alarms for ground proximity, aircraft configuration and approach to stall. The crew was focused on navigating, were stressed, and did not respond adequately to the different alarms. Contributing to the accident were the windy weather conditions, a lack of training, the lack of a crew briefing before the flight, and a failure to correctly respond to the pull up alarm. ==Passengers and crew==

(left of centre, in black) at a one-year anniversary ceremony in Paris – Also in the picture are Daniel Goldberg, Annick Lepetit, and Stéphane Troussel. There were 142 passengers and 11 crew aboard. Most passengers are believed to have been either Comorian or French nationals. There were also citizens of Canada, Ethiopia, Indonesia, Morocco, Israeli Arabs, the Philippines and Yemen on board the plane. The three flight crew members were all Yemeni. Of the cabin crew, 3 were Yemeni, 2 were Moroccan, 1 was Filipino, 1 was Ethiopian, and 1 was Indonesian. ==Controversy==

The French Secretary of State for Transport Dominique Bussereau said that France had banned the plane from its territory several years prior, because "we believed it presented a certain number of irregularities in its technical equipment." However, the Yemeni Transport Minister Khaled Ibrahim Alwazir declared the plane was in line with international standards and that "comprehensive inspection" had been undertaken in Yemen with experts from Airbus. They also disrupted Yemenia flights, protesting in French airports against the airline's safety record and preventing passengers from boarding or checking-in. As a result, Yemenia indefinitely canceled all its flights to and from Marseille and all additional flights between Sanaa and Moroni. ==Burial and repatriation of bodies==

As of Tuesday, 1 December 2009, remains of nine crew members had been retrieved and arrived in Sanaa. The crew members found were Captain Khaled Hajeb, First Officer Ali Atef, the three Yemeni cabin crew members, the two Moroccan cabin crew members, and the Ethiopian cabin crew member. One cabin crew member, Hamdi Wazea, was buried in Sanaa, while the other Yemenis who were found were buried in Aden. The bodies of the Moroccans were sent to Morocco, while the Ethiopian was sent to Addis Ababa. The crew members who had not been found included Yemeni engineer Ali Salem, the Filipino cabin crew member, and the Indonesian cabin crew member. In the last two days leading to 1 December, 54 bodies were buried in Moroni. ==Notes==