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Teenage Girl Lone Survivor from Yemeni Air Crash

By: Gowri Mohanakrishnan

Where: Moroni, Comoros

July 2, 2009 : Weeks after an Air France airliner crashed into the Pacific Ocean, a Yemeni jetliner went down into the Indian Ocean near Comoros, where it was scheduled to land. All passengers were killed, except one teenage girl.

The passengers on the ill-fated plane Airbus that crashed into the Indian Ocean were flying the last leg of a journey from Paris in France to Comoros, with a stop in Yemen to change planes. Of the 153 people on board, only one, a teenage girl, survived. Comoros is an archipelago of three main islands between Africa's southeastern coast and the island of Madagascar. The aircraft, an Airbus 310, was believed to be very old, and some of its equipment had been certified faulty during an inspection in 2007. Severe turbulence and high speed winds at the time were among the factors that caused the crash.

A 14-year-old girl, Bahia Bakari, a resident of Paris, had a miraculous escape. The lone survivor of the crash, she stayed afloat in the water, clinging to a piece of the plane's wreckage. She stayed afloat from 1:30 a.m. to 3 p.m. before she was seen by people in a passing boat and rescued. Her mother, with whom she was travelling, was feared dead with the other passengers. Her father rushed from France to be with her while she was recovering in hospital. Bahia's account of the moments after crash suggested that some others may have survived the initial moments. Later, the plane's black box was retrieved, and data from it may help to throw more light on why the plane crashed.