Teenage girl only known survivor of air disaster

A teenage girl was plucked from the ocean today, the only apparent survivor from an airliner crash that killed 152 people.

Rescuers said the 14-year-old was found floating 10 miles out to sea from the Comoros islands off Africa's east coast where the Yemeni Airbus was trying to land.

The girl, who had been travelling with her mother, was taken to hospital and was making a good recovery, a rescue centre spokesman said.

Earlier reports saying the survivor was a five-year-old boy were incorrect, he said.

The spokesman said the girl's first name was Bahia, adding: "She is well now. She was able to talk to the authorities and explained that."

Many of the dead were French and the EU said it was considering blacklisting airline Yemenia Air which has been criticised for its safety procedures.

Most of the passengers were from Comoros, on the last leg of a journey from France, where there is a large expat population from the former colony.

They had changed planes for the final flight from Yemen's capital Sanaa to the Comoros.

In Marseille, home to around 80,000 immigrant Comorans, honorary consul Stephane Salord said Yemenia's planes were "flying cattle trucks".

"This A310 is a plane that has posed problems for a long time, it is absolutely inadmissible that this airline Yemenia played with the lives of its passengers this way," he said.

"It is an absolute disgrace that we tolerate this kind of thing and I think the company's responsibility is considerable," he said.

Transport Minister Dominique Bussereau said French aviation inspectors found a "number of faults" during a 2007 inspection of the plane that crashed.

Comorans in Paris who have used the same flight attacked conditions on it.

"From Paris to Sanaa everything is fine, by the book. But from Sanaa to Moroni, they board you like you were getting into a minibus in the bush, no one has assigned seats, it's first come, first serve," said Mouijui Abdou.

"Some people stand the whole way to Moroni," said Mohamed Ali. "If you complain, Yemenia just says: 'If you want to get on, get on, if you don't, then find another flight.' Thoue Djoumbe said she and other passengers have been complaining about flight conditions on the airline for years.

"It's a lottery when you travel to Comoros," she said. "We've organised boycotts, we've told the Comoran community not to fly on Yemenia airways because they make a lot of money off of us and meanwhile the conditions on the planes are disastrous."

An Airbus statement said the plane went into service 19 years ago, in 1990, and had accumulated 51,900 flight hours.

Yemeni civil aviation deputy chief Mohammed Abdul Qader said it was too early to speculate on the cause and the flight data recorder had not been found, but the wind was 40 mph and the plane was landing in the middle of the night.

"The weather was very bad ... the wind was very strong," he said.

The Yemenia plane was the second Airbus to crash into the sea in as many months. An Air France Airbus A330-200 crashed into the Atlantic on May 31, killing all 228 people on board, as it flew from Rio de Janeiro to Paris.