A Yemeni Airbus A310 jet carrying 153 people crashed into rough seas as it came into land in the Comoros Islands yesterday, but rescuers plucked a child survivor from the water, officials said.

It was the second time in less than a month an Airbus has crashed into the ocean. French authorities said the Yemeni carrier had been under surveillance and that problems had been reported with the jet.

Aviation officials said bodies and wreckage from the Yemenia Airline flight were spotted in the Indian Ocean near the capital, Moroni.

A surgeon at Moroni hospital, Issa Ben Imani, said a child among the 142 passengers and 11 crew on Flight IY 626 was rescued alive.

Dr Imani said the child was being taken to land where an ambulance waited to take the child to hospital. The islands form an archipelago of volcanic islands off the south-east coast of Africa.

In Sanaa, Yemenia's deputy managing director for operations, Mohammed al-Sumairi, said three bodies had also been recovered.

No Australians were thought to have been on board the flight, a spokeswoman for the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade said.

''Comoros Island authorities have advised the [Australian] embassy in Port Louis that most passengers are from Comoros Islands and France,'' she said.

Flight IY 626 had started in Paris early on Monday and made stops in Marseille, Sanaa and Djibouti before heading to Moroni.

Airport director Hadji Mmadi Ali said Moroni airport control tower lost contact with the jet just before it was due to land in bad weather. French civil aviation officials said 66 passengers were French.

Three babies were also among the passengers, officials said.

Mr Kader said the wind was blowing in gusts of up to 115km/h when the disaster happened.

Airbus, still reeling from the crash of an Air France A330-320 into the Atlantic on June 1, with 228 people on board, set up a crisis cell and sent investigators to the Comoros.

France's Transport Minister, Dominique Bussereau, said inspectors had noted numerous faults on the Yemenia jet and the airline was being closely monitored by EU authorities. ''The A310 in question had been inspected in France in 2007 by the DGAC [French civil aviation authority] and a certain number of faults had been noted,'' Mr Bussereau said.

AFP, AAP