It was reported that the passengers had embarked on a Yemenia A330 flight from Roissy on Monday and, after a stop in Marseille, continued their journey to Sanaa, where they changed their flight to board the A310, which crashed off Comoros.

The director of the Yemenia airway office in Moroni, Mohammad al Soumairi, said that bad weather might be one of the reasons for the crash of the Airbus A310-300 flight.

"The weather was bad, with strong winds and high seas. The wind speed at the international airport on Grande Comoros (one of the three islands of the Union of Comoros) was 61 kilometers per hour. There may be other factors," Soumairi said.

However, the website quoted France Meteo as saying that weather conditions were "not at all bad".

Comorian Defense minister Bourhane Hamid informed the media that army troops and speedboats had been sent to the area, where the plane crashed.

"For now, we do not know if there are any survivors," he said.

According to a United Nations official, who was at the airport control tower, the flight informed the control tower for landing, and then lost contact with it.

This has been the second air crash off Comoros since November 23, 1996, when a hijacked Boeing 767 of the Ethiopian Airlines crashed north off Comoros, killing 125 of the 175 passengers on board.

France's Transport Minister Dominique Bussereau (L) speaks to the media as he leaves the crisis centre at Charles de Gaulle airport near Paris June 30, 2009. The airline said one survivor had been rescued from the sea. [Xinhua]

This is also the second Airbus aircrafts which crashed in one month.

On June 1, a Airbus A 330 plane crashed into the Atlantic sea three and a half hours after it tool off from Rio de Janeiro, killing all of the 228 people on board, including a crew of 12.

Reports said that the Comorian airports presented certain risks due to proximity of the surrounding peaks and also the backwardness of the airport infrastructure.

On December 27, 2002, a small plane with 16 passengers on board crashed in the process of landing near the airport in Anjouan Ouani, another island of the Union of Comoros, killing one of the passengers and injuring another 3.

Another accident took place at the same airport on April 9, 2007, when a flight to Mayotte carrying 13 passengers run off the runway when taking off. Fortunately, no one was killed or injured.

Relatives and friends of passengers aboard the Airbus flight A310-300 from Yemen arrive at a crisis center at Charles de Gaulle airport near Paris, June 30, 2009. [Xinhua]