Sole survivor relives terror of Yemenia Airways crash at French trial

A woman who was just 12 when she survived the 2009 Yemenia Airways crash in the Comoros islands that killed all 152 others onboard described Monday the terrifying moments leading up to her plunge into the ocean and subsequent miraculous rescue, in the French trial against the airline. Bahia Bakari, now 25, has sat through several hearings with her father but had not testified or spoken to journalists attending the trial that opened this month. "I didn't see how I was going to get through this," Bakari told the court of her hours spent in the water holding on to a piece of debris, with "the taste of jet fuel" in her mouth. Bakari and her mother left Paris on June 29, 2009, for her grandfather's wedding in the Comoros, changing planes in the Yemeni capital of Sanaa for the final leg of the trip. "It was a smaller plane, there were flies inside and it smelled strongly like a bathroom," she said, but "the flight went normally" -- until the beginning of the landing descent. During the night-time approach of Yemenia Flight 626 to Moroni, the capital of the Comoros islands that lie between Mozambique and Madagascar, the Airbus A310 jet plunged into the Indian Ocean with its engines running at full throttle. "I started to feel the turbulence, but nobody was reacting much, so I told myself it must be normal," Bakari said as over 100 family members or friends of the victims listened in silence. Suddenly "I felt something like an electric shock go through my body", she told the court. Story has more.<br/>