|

She was asked to join the team by Blakes Emergency Services, a UK-based consultancy specialising in emergency crisis management.

As part of the mission, Ms Ernest and colleagues from other airline emergency response teams interviewed families to get basic personal details about passengers who died on that flight.
Families travelled from Marseille and Paris to Moroni to be interviewed as most of the passengers were Comorians living in France.

Ms Ernest reported that most of the 72 families interviewed felt deep grief and were very emotional at times, and so she needed to show great compassion.

Other members of the care team working alongside her were from Britain, Cameroon, Kenya and South Africa, and it was important to have French-speaking officials like Ms Ernest to interview the families.

She also represented Blakes at high-level meetings with government, aviation and airline officials and liaised with French, Comorian and American defence forces who formed part of the search and sea rescue team.

“It was an opportunity to learn more on how to respond in a real emergency and manage a real crisis such as this one. Blakes carried out the work in a highly professional manner,” said Ms Ernest.

She added that though they were working in a Muslim country, where religious beliefs demand burial within 24 hours, there had to be a lot of cooperation and understanding from Comorian officials and families of the bereaved.

Meanwhile, Air Seychelles’ executive chairman Captain David Savy has said: “It is of significant benefit for Air Seychelles to have taken part in the investigation of the Yemeni air crash, and it will definitely enhance our own emergency response procedures if we ever do face a similar situation.”

The Yemeni-run Airbus A310-300 went down in the Indian Ocean with 153 people on board as it came to land in Moroni, the capital of the Comoros. It was flying the final leg of a trip from Paris and Marseille via Yemen.

There was only one survivor, a 14-year-old French-Comorian girl who was found clinging on to aircraft debris and floating far from the crash scene. Apparently she had been ejected from the plane when it hit the sea.

Twenty-seven bodies from the crash were washed ashore on Mamba island off the Tanzanian coast.
Yemenia Air later announced it would pay €20,000 each in compensation to victims’ families; 142 passengers and 11 crew members were on board.