Bahia Bakari

Since the Comoran government has no ships of its own, it asked all commercial and private vessels to help in the search and rescue effort. At approx. 11 local time (08:00 UTC), about 9 hours after the crash, the Sima Com 2 — a privately owned ship which normally carries passengers between Comoros and the neighboring island of Madagascar — arrived at the crash site and discovered Bakari, as the sole survivor among bits of floating wreckage.

Bakari was released from the hospital three weeks later, after undergoing treatment and surgery. In 2010 she released a memoir book, "Moi Bahia, la miraculée" ("I'm Bahia, the miracle girl"), co-authored with a French journalist as a ghostwriter, detailing her survival and rescue. She has reportedly turned down an offer by Steven Spielberg to make a film based on her book.

In January 2010, Bakari released an account of her ordeal in a French memoir, "Moi Bahia, la miraculée" ("I'm Bahia, the miracle girl"), published by Jean-Claude Gawsewitch Éditeur in Paris, France. In the book, co-authored with French journalist Omar Guendouz as ghostwriter, Bakari provides details about her survival and rescue. She discloses that immediately after the crash, she thought she had fallen out of the airplane by pressing her forehead too hard against the window, and that her mother—who she believed had landed safely without her—would scold her for not wearing her seat belt. Then, floating on debris in the midst of a jet fuel slick released from the aircraft's burst fuel tanks, she recalls having "...this taste of fuel in my mouth, mixed with salt, which burned my throat, my lungs and my stomach." Bakari writes that she only realized her plane had crashed and that she was the sole survivor when she was in the hospital, believing until then that she had simply fallen out into the ocean. AOL News reports that Steven Spielberg approached Bakari to make a film based on her book, but she turned him down, worried that "it would be too terrifying."

Bahia Bakari (born 15 August 1996) is a French woman who was the sole survivor of Yemenia Flight 626, an Airbus A310, which crashed into the Indian Ocean near the north coast of Grande Comore, Comoros on 30 June 2009, killing the 152 other people on board. Bakari, who could barely swim and had no life vest, clung to a piece of aircraft wreckage, floating in heavy seas for over nine hours, much of it in pitch darkness, before being rescued. Her mother, who had been traveling with her from Paris, France, for a summer vacation in Comoros, died in the crash.

Bakari was born on 15 August 1996 in the former French commune of Évry, Essonne, near Paris, France. She was the oldest of four children born to Kasim Bakari (born 1961) and his wife Aziza Aboudou, both of whom were from the Comorian city of Niumadzakh Bambao. Kasim worked as a janitor, while Aziza served as a housewife. Baki had two younger brothers named Badru and Badavi, and a younger sister named Badyan.

According to Aviation Safety Network's database, Bakari is a survivor of the deadliest sole survivor ocean crash, and the second-deadliest sole survivor crash ever. The only other sole survivor crash that was deadlier involved Northwest Airlines Flight 255 in 1987, in which 156 were killed, including two on the ground.