Human fault, and French connection

One more air crash and over 150 lives have been lost. A second major air disaster in one month. Who is to be blamed for the latest one?? Should Yemeni Civil Aviation be held responsible for this?

The burning question is- how could they keep flying an aircraft which was 19 years old, had accumulated 51,900 flight hours, and was black-listed by French authorities two years ago after they found a large number of faults in it. France had categorically denied this fateful aircraft A-310 an entry into her skies. That was why the Yemeni airline Yemenia had employed a relatively newer Airbus A330 for the first two legs of their Paris-Marseille-Sana’a-Moroni flight number IY-626. And for the final leg of this flight, from Sana’a to Moroni, the passengers were asked to shift to A310 carrier.

This whole episode is enough to throw light on how irresponsibly civil aviation of Yemen had acted in this matter. They are saying they never knew the aircraft was faulty. Then why had they not employed the same aircraft on the first two legs of this flight, and why did they have to shift the passengers to other aircraft?? It is a white lie if Yemeni civil authorities say that they were not aware. They are accountable for the loss of so many lives, and now they are trying to save their skin.

Well, there are other airlines also which have been acting irresponsibly and risking the lives of passengers, just for their monetary gains. Had the pilot of Riyadh-Mumbai flight number AI-822 of Air India Captain NK Beri not refused to fly the aircraft with its landing gear down, the passengers could have met the same fate around one month back as those of IY-626.

To fly a carrier without retracting its landing gears accounts for high fuel consumption. And flying in this situation in night time is more dangerous as pilots cannot see earth properly to find a place for emergency landing. Had Captain Beri not refused to fly, that flight could well have been in the pages of aviation disasters of world, as is the flight no. HF-3378 of 12th July 2000.

The flight in question had taken off from Chania in Greece for Hannover in Germany with its landing gear down. The carrier faced fuel exhaustion on the way and crash-landed short of runway at Vienna in Austria. Luckily, the passengers escaped with minor injuries, but carrier had to be written off.

Apart from unforgivable negligence on part of Yemenia officials, there seems to be another angle to this tragic episode. This flight had taken off from French land, and was due to land in Comoros which has been a French Overseas Colony until 1975. And on board were 66 French nationals.

Just one month before this plane crash, the Air France Airbus A330 on flight from Rio de Janeiro to Paris crashed mid-air over Atlantic Ocean. Most of the passengers on that flight were French nationals. At that time, a theory had been put forwarded that opening of a French military base in Dubai might have angered Islamic extremists or religious zealots.

Air France officials also had got a bomb threat call three days before that incident, and an airplane had to be grounded after that call. Although, no extremist outfit has claimed responsibility, the theory of terrorism has not been discarded completely. And now this crash of a plane carrying a large number of French nationals does indicate towards a possible link between the two incidents.