Ocean Jet Crash Child Survivor

A toddler from a packed passenger jet that crashed in the Indian Ocean near the Comoros archipelago has reportedly been rescued.

Three bodies were also retrieved, along with debris from the plane, but no other survivors have been recovered so far, Comoros immigrations officer Rachida Abdullah said.

The Yemeni Airways Airbus 310 crashed with 142 passengers - including three children -and a crew of 11 Yemenis on board.

Most of the passengers were from Comoros, returning from Paris. Sixty-six on board were French nationals.

Two French military planes and a French ship had left the islands of Mayotte and Reunion to search for the passenger jet.

The flight, which began in Paris, was flying from Sanaa to Moroni, the capital of the main island of the Comoros archipelago.

Yemenia spokesman Mohammad al Sumairi said: "The weather conditions were rough - strong wind and high seas.

"The wind speed recorded on land at the airport was 61km (38 miles) an hour. There could be other factors."

A United Nations official at the airport said the control tower had received notification the plane was coming in to land, and then lost contact with it.

Yemenia is 51% owned by the Yemeni government and 49% by the Saudi Arabian government.

Its fleet includes two Airbus 330-200s, four Airbus 310-300s and four Boeing 737-800s, according to the company website.

The Comoros covers three small volcanic islands, Grande Comore, Anjouan and Moheli, in the Mozambique channel, 300km (190 miles) north west of Madagascar and a similar distance east of the African mainland.

It is the second Airbus to plunge into the sea this month. An Air France Airbus A330-200 crashed into the Atlantic Ocean killing 228 people on board on June 1.

In 1996, a hijacked Ethiopian Airlines Boeing 767 also crashed into the sea off the Comoros islands in 1996, killing 125 of 175 passengers and crew.

The European Union will soon propose the creation of a global blacklist of airlines deemed unsafe.

"My idea is to propose a world blacklist similar to that in the EU," Transport Commissioner Antonio Tajani.

He also said he would contact the carrier involved, Yemenia, to see what had happened in the Comoros crash.

Pilot Rescued From English Channel

The pilot of a light plane had to be rescued from the English Channel after he was forced to ditch the aircraft when its engine failed.

The man was said to have been stranded on the plane's wing for about an hour waiting to be picked up.

He was later found floating in the water wearing a yellow life jacket and suffering mild hypothermia.

The RAF and Belgium airforce were both involved in the rescue operation.

The pilot was taken by helicopter to William Harvey Hospital in Ashford, Kent.

He had been en route from Lydd in Kent to France when he brought the plane down at 2.30pm, about eight miles from his origin.

He was the only person on board the aircraft.

Michael Mulford from RAF Kinloss told Sky News: "Details are sketchy, but it seems he was able to stay with the aircraft long enough to be rescued by a passing ship.

"It set off an international rescue operation. We were involved and the Belgium airforce launched a helicopter."

A spokesman for the Dover coastguard said it received a call from Lydd Airport air traffic control reporting a light aircraft with engine failure, eight miles south-east of Lydd.

"At the same time a south-west bound vessel in the Dover Strait reported a light aircraft ditching in the vicinity.

"The vessel immediately went to give assistance as did another vessel.

"The pilot was rescued from the wreckage by the Dutch Faith vessel."

The spokesman added it appeared the pilot was able to land the plane and get out.

"He was wearing a life jacket which is a sensible precaution if flying over water," he said.

"The jacket enabled him to be spotted along with the good weather conditions, everything was in his favour."

Air France 'Disintegrated In Mid-Air'

Two pieces of new evidence have suggested that the stricken Air France jet broke up over a number of minutes, rather than in one catastrophic incident. Firstly, bodies from Flight 447 had been picked up from locations more than 50 miles apart, the Brazilian Air Force revealed.

And secondly, a re-analysis of the plane's last automatic transmissions indicated many parts had malfunctioned before it plunged into the Atlantic.

Manufacturer Airbus told customers the investigation re-enforced the belief that the parts measuring air speed were the first to fail.

The plane's three speed sensors, or Pitot tubes, are likely to have malfunctioned four hours into the flight from Rio de Janeiro to Paris, according to pilot union officials who examined the data.

Sky News has also learned that automated messages showed a gradual change in the cabin pressure shortly before the plane crashed.

This could suggest that the plane was either climbing or descending, and could again dismiss the idea of an explosion or a catastrophic break up.

Meanwhile, two terror suspects who died alongside 226 other passengers on the stricken jet have been ruled out as a cause of the disaster.

The two men only "shared the same name" as known Islamic radicals, posthumous security checks found.


Although their bodies have yet to be recovered, France's Interior Ministry confirmed that a "deep and wide-ranging investigation has allowed us to clear them".

The announcement came as the urgent hunt for the flight's black boxes was boosted by the introduction of a French nuclear submarine.

Emeraude will trawl 13 square miles a day, using sonar to attempt to pick up the boxes' acoustic beacons before they begin fading in three weeks' time.

Brazilian searchers in charge of recovering floating bodies and debris say the surface search area has now widened into Senegalese waters.

Ocean currents have pushed the remnants far and wide since the jet went down on June 1 on route to Charles de Gaulle International airport.

The black boxes provide the best hope of unravelling the cause of the worst aviation accident since 2001.