French officials and Comoran French criticized faults of Yemenia Airway after the company's jetliner, an Airbus A310, crashed off the Comoros coast early Tuesday with 153 people on board, including 66 French nationals.

The crashed jetliner had been forbidden to enter French airspace years ago because some equipment faults were detected during a 2007 inspection, French Transport Minister Dominique Bussereau said.

French authorities have kept close watch on Yemenia Airway though it was not on the blacklist of airlines barred from entering French airspace, Bussereau added.

He also promised to find the black box recorders during his visit to Charles de Gaulle airport in Paris.

The airway between France and Comoros via Yemen has been the target of complaints for years, especially from immigrants of Comoros, a former French colony.

Around 80,000 Comoran immigrants live in Marseille, southeast France. Many of them commute between France and Comoros. They were so angry about Yemenia Airway's delay in publishing the name list of victims and other further information that one clashed with police at Marseille airport on Tuesday afternoon.

At Charles de Gaulle airport, a relative of one air disaster victim complained vehemently that the conditions on the Yemenia airline were terrible when he took the plane last year. The Yemenia Airway only wanted to make money, he said.

Some passengers even set up an association called "SOS voyage aux Comores" (SOS Comoros Travel) in 2008, demanding airways operating on the France-Comoros route improve their services.

The association's spokesman, Farid Soilihi, said Tuesday that flights between the Yemeni capital of Sana'a and Moroni are carried out by "cowboy operators." "They treat people like cattle, they don't respect timetables, there are always technical problems."

The jetliner of Flight 626 took off Monday from de Gaulle airport to Sana'a via Marseille. When the journey from Sana'a to Moroni resumed, passengers on an Airbus 330 were put on another jet of Airbus 310 which lost contact with Moroni airport near Comoran archipelago, local media reports said.

EU Transport Commissioner Antonio Tajani said in Brussels that a full investigation will be carried out into the change of planes.

An Airbus statement said the crashed Airbus 310-300 went into service in 1990, and had accumulated 51,900 flight hours. It has been operated by Yemenia Airway since 1999.

Airbus stopped producing this model in July 2007 and said it was sending a team of specialists to Comoros. There are 214 Airbus 310-300s in service around the world by May this year.

Source: Xinhua