Backgrounder: Air crashes near La Reunion island in recent years
Xinhua, July 30, 2015 Adjust font size:
A piece of plane debris was found on the French Indian Ocean island of La Reunion on Wednesday and U.S. investigators concluded that it came from a Boeing 777 airplane, raising speculations that it belongs to MH370 that went missing in March 2014.
La Reunion lies in the southern Indian Ocean, 650 km east of Madagascar and about 190 km southwest of Mauritius. It also lies about 4,000 km from the area considered the most likely crash zone of MH370.
The following is a review of air disasters that happened near this French island in the southwestern Indian Ocean in recent years.
On Nov. 23, 1996, a hijacked Boeing 767 passenger jet of the Ethiopian Airlines crashed into the Indian Ocean, just 1 km off the Comoro Islands, northwest of Madagascar, killing 125 people out of the 175 passengers and crew members on board with 50 others surviving.
On May 4, 2006, a twin-motored plane crashed close to the coast of the La Reunion island.
On Oct. 25, 2006, a light plane crashed shortly after takeoff from the town of Toliara, in southwest Madagascar, killing all six people aboard.
On June 30, 2009, a Yemeni passenger jet Airbus A310-300 with 153 people on board crashed into choppy seas as it tried to land in bad weather on the Indian Ocean archipelago of Comoros. Only a 13-year-old French girl survived.
On Nov. 27, 2012, a plane crashed in the Indian Ocean off the Comoros Islands after suffering mechanical problems, but all 29 people aboard were rescued.
The Embraer jet, bound for the neighboring island of Anjouan, went down about 200 meters from the Comoros Islands' capital Moroni airport, just five minutes after taking off. Endi