SANAA, July 1 (Xinhua) -- After rescuers found a child survivor who was pulled alive from the sea, the cause of the crash of an Yemeni jetliner with more than 150 people on board off Comoran coasts remains elusive.

    The jetliner, an Airbus A310, crashed early Tuesday into the Indian Ocean as it approached the airport on the Comoros islands in heavy winds and bad weather. The plane was carrying 153 people -- 142 passengers and a crew of 11.

    France's Transport Minister Dominique Bussereau said on Europe 1 radio Tuesday that the plane was "not at fault" in the crash. "It has nothing to do with the plane."

    However, the minister also pointed out that the jet had been found to have "faults" in a 2007 inspection.

    Bussereau told France's i-Tele television that the Airbus A310 was inspected by France's civil aviation agency DGAC in 2007, and "they noticed a certain number of faults."

    Those failings, the minister said, had been pointed out to the company by the French authorities and by coincidence, this plane had never reappeared in European airports since then.

    "The company was not on the black list but was subject to stricter checks on our part, and was due to be interviewed shortly by the European Union's safety committee," said Bussereau.

    But Yemeni Transport Minister Khaled al-Wazir rebutted the reports that the crash of the Airbus A310-300 was due to technical problems.

    The plane was "technically sound," and underwent a thorough inspection in May under Airbus supervision, said al-Wazir.

    "It was a comprehensive inspection carried out in Yemen...with experts from Airbus," the minister said. "It was in line with international standards."

    Al-Wazir said the French authorities did put forward some suggestions for the plane two years ago, but the advices concerned mostly the level of passenger comfort including some improvements of plane seats, television screen and earphones.

    Yemeni civil aviation deputy chief Mohammed Abdul Qader said the flight data recorder has not been found yet and it was too early to speculate on the cause of the crash. But he said the wind was 61 kph as the plane was landing in the middle of the night.

    "The weather was very bad," he said, adding the windy conditions hampered rescue efforts. Rescue teams on Tuesday found a child survivor and retrieved the bodies of some of the victims, official Yemeni news agency SABA reported on Tuesday. Two French military planes and a French ship were searching for the wreck of the plane.

    The director of the Yemenia Airways office in Moroni, Mohammad al Soumairi, also indicated that bad weather might be one of the causes of the crash.

    "The weather was bad, with strong winds and high seas...There may be other factors," Soumairi said.

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

    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 the Comoros.

    Besides 66 French nationals, there were also nationals from Canada, Comoros, Ethiopia, Indonesia, Morocco, the Palestinian territories, the Philippines and Yemen on the plane, a Yemeni aviation official said.

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

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

    On June 1, an Airbus A330 plane crashed into the Atlantic sea three and a half hours after it took off from Rio de Janeiro, killing all of the 228 people on board, including a crew of 12.