Black box of Yemen airline located under Indian Ocean

Thursday, July 2, 2009

Antananarivo - The black box of the Yemen Airbus A310, which crashed early on Tuesday off the Comoros, has been located under the Indian Ocean.

Signal from the black box of the crashed IY626 plane belonging to Yemenia airline was detected around 4:30pm (1330 GMT) 40km off Grand Comore, one of the three islands of Comoros.

A French ship, "La rieuse", had already arrived at the scene around lunch time on Wednesday to begin operations to recover the black box.

The French secretary of state for cooperation said the French Bureau for Investigation and Analysis would begin work and that the black box would tell the truth.

A total of 153 people, including a crew of 11, were on the Airbus A310-300 plane, belonging to Yemani state carrier Yemenia Air, which was on route from Yemen's capital Sanaa to Moroni, the capital of Comoros.

The cause is linked to bad weather, conditions of access to the Comorian airports and the unfavorable conditions of the Yemen airline.