Ethiopian Review

MORONI – The sole survivor of a Yemeni jet that plunged into deep water while attempting to land on the Indian Ocean archipelago of Comoros was reunited with her father in France early on Thursday.

Bahia Bakari, 14, who can barely swim, clung on to floating debris for more than 12 hours before search teams spotted her in rough seas.

“I am torn between relief and sadness. I am happy to see my daughter but her mother did not come back,” Bahia’s father, Bakari Kassim, told reporters at Roissy Airport in Paris, shortly after greeting his daughter on her return from Comoros.

Rescuers failed

Rescuers have failed to find any of the remaining 152 passengers and crew since the Yemenia Airbus A310 crashed in rough weather in the early hours of Tuesday.

American and French military aircraft continued to scour the crash site to locate the wreckage, thought to be in waters up to 500 metres (1,600 feet) deep.

Local doctors, who marvelled at Bakari’s escape with little more than cuts, bruises and a fractured collar bone, said she was discharged on her father’s request.

“It was on the demand of her father in France. The girl was regaining her spirit and was in a satisfactory physical state,” said Dr Jean Youssef, lead doctor at the disaster unit on Grand Comore.

Youssef said Moroni’s El Marouf hospital lacked the facilities needed to properly scan the teenager’s body for any internal damage. Bakari returned to France on a French government jet with French Cooperation Secretary Alain Joyandet.

Reporters said Bakari, who is still unaware that her mother died in the crash, was groggy and did not say much at the airport.

Local rescuers suspect many of the dead remained trapped inside the doomed plane and say the search effort should focus on finding the wreck.

“Everything leads us to believe that the bodies of the victims remain inside. In two days we haven’t found a body, any large pieces of debris or suitcases floating on the water,” disaster centre member Ibrahim Abdourazak told Reuters.

The cause of the crash is still unknown, officials say. The French defence ministry denied on Wednesday reports by the state-run airline that the flight recorder — the so called black-box — had been located.

The aircraft, which was on the final leg of a trip from Paris and Marseille, was the second Airbus to crash into the sea in a month.

The airline said there were 75 Comoran passengers on board, along with 65 French nationals, one Palestinian and one Canadian. The crew comprised of six Yemenis, two Moroccans, one Indonesian, one Ethiopian and a Filipina.

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Why children often live to tell accident tales

Bakari Bahia not the first example of a child being alone in living through a plane crash. In 2003 a three-year-old boy was the only survivor of a plane crash in Sudan which killed 116 and in 1995 a nine-year-old girl was alone in living through a mid-air explosion on board a flight over Colombia.

Two years later, a Thai boy was the lone survivor of a Vietnam Airlines crash which killed 65 and in 1998 a 10-year-old boy was alone in surviving a Taiwanese jet crash which killed 196. However, he died shortly afterwards.

So do children have a better chance of surviving plane crashes? It’s a question that leaves safety experts perplexed and in want of hard evidence. Although unclear, there are reasons to suggest some children fare better than others, depending on their size.

Prof Ed Galea, director of the Fire Safety Engineering Group at the University of Greenwich, says: “With an adult with their head above the seat and legs on the floor, the chances are you’ll receive some sort of injury from debris landing on your head and legs.

“A youngster in their own seat can be more or less cocooned in and… might be less likely to receive body injuries. They are more or less cocooned in a solid, rigid environment.”

But he says air travel is probably more dangerous for infants because of the way they are carried on the laps of their parents and in extension belts attached to their parents’ belts.

He says in car seats they have seat straps over both shoulders and their rib cages, giving more protection than an adult.

- By Reuters