Backgrounder: Yemenia Airways

BEIJING, June 30 (Xinhua) -- An Airbus A310 belonging to Yemenia Air with more than 150 people on board crashed in the Comoros archipelago in the Indian Ocean on Tuesday.

The Yemenia Airways is the national airline of Yemen, with 51 percent share by the Yemen government and 49 percent by the government of Saudi Arabia.

The Sana'a-based company was founded in 1961 and started operations in 1962. It provides both domestic and international services to more than 30 destinations in Africa, the Middle East, Europe and Asia.

The main base of the airways is Sana'a International Airport, with a hub at Aden Internatinal Airport.

The Airbus A310 of the Yemen Airways is a medium to long-range wide-body airliner, which has been used extensively on transatlantic routes.

It was marked as an introduction to wide-body operations for developing airlines.

Tuesday's crash is the fourth incident of Yemenia. A Boeing 727-200 lost at Asmara International Airport in Asmara, Eritrea in August 2001. Another Boeing 727-200 hijacked at Djibouti-Ambouli International Airport in Djibouti city of Djibouti in January 2001. In June 2000, the third Boeing plane lost at Khartoum International Airport in Sudan's capital Khartoum.