Yemenia Flight 626 Ongoing Investigation

Some airlines refuse to perform night approaches to the Moroni airport in the Comoros islands on the western coast of Grande Comoros. The airport is a non-redar environment, which means any inbound plane must use an instrument approach.

That instrument approach was fatal for Flight 626, which crashed on June 30, nearly 2 years ago.

International Lease Finance Corporation first leased the Airbus 310 to Air Liberté and from September 1999 to Yemenia airlines. In 2007, the plane had failed French inspections and was banned from French airspace. The French passengers aboard the flight had transferred to Flight 626 at Sana’a

The crash is under investigation.

Description of the runways of Moroni Airport:

Length: 2900 meters Runway 02 is equipped with an automatic instrument landing system (ILS) Runway 20 is equipped with VOR-DME system (VHF Omni-directional Range navigation system, and Distance Measuring Equipment)

work below cited from the Internet Wire, Feb 15, 2011 pNA
LOS ANGELES, CA, Feb 15, 2011 (MARKETWIRE via COMTEX) — For the families of the victims of the Yemenia Airlines flight 626 plane crash on June 30, 2009, a group of California law firms has filed case BC452279 in Los Angeles Superior Court against International Lease Finance Corporation (ILFC). The Airbus A310 leased by ILFC to Yemenia airlines crashed on approach to Prince Said Ibrahim International Airport, in Moroni, Comoros.

The case charges both ILFC and the unnamed principals whose negligence contributed to the crash that killed a hundred and fifty-two individuals, and nearly killed the one survivor, 12-year-old Bahia Bakari who was rescued after spending thirteen hours adrift in the Indian Ocean.

Plaintiffs assert that Yemenia Airlines was “incompetent, unfit, inexperienced and/or reckless in its operation as an air carrier,” which can be ascertained by looking at the airline’s “long and notorious history of poor maintenance on an epic scale, poor pilot training and total lack of compliance with minimum standards of safety at every level of the company from 1999 to the present” (including but not limited to substandard or non-existent SARP, training, inspections, pilot certification and supervision, plane maintenance and airworthiness, and in-house regulations/documentation.) As the leasing agency ILFC is responsible for seeing they lease to responsible airline operators.

Yemenia Airlines Flight 749 flew from Marseille to Sana’a International Airport, where passengers disembarked from a different airbus, and boarded Flight 626 Airbus A310 (70-ADJ). This second Airbus had avoided European airspace since an inspection in 2007 revealed it as being in noncompliance with ICAO standards.

“We expect that attorneys representing other families in France will want their clients to join this lawsuit in the United States,” explains George Hatcher, whose Air Crash Consultants firm provides international communications support, investigative, paralegal and claims management services in the case.

The investigation is ongoing.