Anger at the carrier continued at Charles de Gaulle Airport in Paris among young protesters, many of them of Comoran descent, who tried to block passengers from a Yemenia flight. French news media reported that about 60 passengers did not check in but that the flight departed with 100 passengers.
Comoran Vice President and Transport Minister Idi Nadhoim scolded French authorities for not warning Comoros about the Airbus A310's questionable safety record.
"I wish the French could have informed us about any irregularities with this plane," he said in a telephone interview with France 24 television. "What is this? Discrimination between French passengers that have to be protected in France and those French people who are left to fly in these kinds of planes?"
Bahia Bakari's story was told with fascination from Comoran villages to towns across France. She has a broken collarbone and cuts on her face, and, according to a rescue worker who jumped into the sea to save her, she could barely swim and was too weak to hold on to a buoy thrown to her from a boat. She was draped in blankets and given sugary hot water to drink.
"She clung to a piece of debris from the plane for 12 hours," French Cooperation Secretary Alain Joyandet told France Info radio. Later in the day he told reporters she was en route home to Paris. "She signaled to a passing boat, and it was able to pick her up. She really showed incredible physical and moral strength."
Bahia boarded the doomed plane with her mother; the two were traveling to Comoros to visit relatives. Her mother, like the rest of the passengers, is presumed dead, but Bahia doesn't know this.
"When I spoke to her she was asking for her mother," Kassim Bakari said.
"They told her she was in a room next door, so as not to traumatize her. But it's not true. I don't know who is going to tell her. . . . I can't tell her that."
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jeffrey.fleishman@latimes.com
Lauter is a special correspondent.
