Gulf | Yemen
A310 largely used as freight carrier across the world
The Airbus A310 is a long-haul jet which was first flown in 1978. It is a shorter version of the A300 - itself the first twin engined wide-body jet in the world - and was designed to be able to carry around 200 passengers halfway around the world.
- Gulf News Report
- Published: 22:51 June 30, 2009
Dubai: The Airbus A310 is a long-haul jet which was first flown in 1978.
It is a shorter version of the A300 - itself the first twin engined wide-body jet in the world - and was designed to be able to carry around 200 passengers halfway around the world.
Although production officially ceased in July 2007, the last plane was actually delivered in 1998.
With a range of between 6,800km and 9,200km, the A310 was heavily marketed to emerging carriers as a more cost-effective way to get into the transAtlantic market and still remains popular amongst many of the smaller carriers.
The version that Yemenia operates, the A310-300, was first flown in 1985.
Although 255 of them were sold, the plane has long been superceded by the extremely successful Airbus A330.
In fact, it spent the latter part of its active life as a popular choice for freight companies, with Federal Express (68 aircraft) being the largest operator.
The plane has been involved in four previous fatal accidents in the past ten years, with the most serious being in January 2000 when a Kenya Airways flight crashed into the Atlantic Ocean shortly after taking off from Abidjan.
Yemenia is the national carrier of one of the world's poorest countries and until now had a relatively incident-free record.
Initially founded as Yemen Airways in August 1961, the airline operates passenger and cargo services to about 30 international and domestic destinations in Africa, the Middle East, Europe and the Far East.
In the last major incident involving the airline, a Yemenia Boeing with 91 passengers aboard including the then US ambassador to Sana'a was hijacked on a domestic flight in January 2001.
The hijacker, armed with a pen-like pistol containing a single bullet, tried to force the crew to fly to Baghdad but the plane finally landed in Djibouti. One crew member was injured in the incident and the hijacker was sentenced to 15 years in prison.
The Airbus A310 that crashed yesterday had apparently been inspected in France in 2007 by the French civil aviation authority and "a certain number of faults had been noted".
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