French and U.S. aircraft hunted on Wednesday for survivors from a plane that crashed off Comoros, while in Paris expatriates from the Indian Ocean archipelago tried to block another flight by the same airline.

The European Commission sent a letter to the airline, Yemenia, saying its aircraft could be banned in the European Union after a Yemenia-run Airbus A310-300 went down in the Indian Ocean on Tuesday with 153 people on board.

The plane was coming in to land at Moroni, the Comoran capital, on the final leg of a trip from Paris and Marseille to Comoros via Yemen.

The cause of the crash was still unknown. State-run Yemenia said the flight recorder -- the so-called black box -- had been located, but this was subsequently denied by the French defence ministry.

"The Transall (a French search plane) picked up a signal from the Airbus' distress beacon and not the black box," a ministry spokesman said in Paris.

Just one survivor -- a 14-year-old Franco-Comoran girl -- has been found in the sea so far, having held on to floating material in the darkness of the early hours.

"She clung to a piece of debris from the plane for 12 hours," French Cooperation Secretary Alain Joyandet told France Info radio, adding she would be flown to a Paris hospital. "She signalled to a passing boat and it was able to pick her up. She really showed incredible physical and moral strength."

Comoran Vice-President Idi Nadhoim told Reuters no other survivors had been found by Wednesday morning. "But we haven't given up hope," he said in a telephone interview.

As a flotilla of boats took to sea off the main Grande Comore island at first light, angry Comoran expatriates tried to block passengers from checking into another Yemenia flight from Paris' Charles de Gaulle airport to Yemen.

"We don't want any more coffins travelling. We don't want Yemenia any more," said protester Idris Ahmed.

About 60 people who had been due to fly did not check in but some 100 did and the flight took off.

The survivor from the doomed flight, identified as Bakari Bahia, had cuts to her face and a fractured collar-bone, but was stable overnight after being picked up on Tuesday.

Her father, Bakari Kassim, told French TV channel i-Tele he had contacted his daughter by telephone.

"I asked her what happened and she said 'We saw the plane fall in the water. I found myself in the water. I was hearing people speak but I couldn't see anyone. I was in the dark. I couldn't see anything. Daddy, I couldn't swim very well. I grabbed on to something but I don't know what'."

The airline said 75 Comorans and 65 French nationals were on board the flight, along with one Palestinian and one Canadian. The crew comprised six Yemenis, two Moroccans, one Indonesian, one Ethiopian and a Filipina.

SAFETY CONTROVERSY

With a population of about 800,000, the formerly French-ruled Comoros archipelago comprises three islands off mainland east Africa and just northwest of Madagascar.

Comoran officials said France had sent a plane and was moving two ships into the area, while the United States also sent a helicopter to help and a plane with supplies.

The crashed plane was the second Airbus to plunge into the sea within a month. An Air France Airbus A330-200 crashed into the Atlantic Ocean killing 228 people on board on June 1.

The Paris-Marseille-Yemen leg of the Yemenia flight was flown by an Airbus A330. In Sanaa, those passengers flying on to the Comoros changed onto a second plane, the A310 that crashed.

French Transport Minister Dominique Bussereau said Paris banned this specific Yemenia A310 from its airspace after faults were found in 2007.

The EU's Executive Commission, in a letter to the airline obtained by Reuters, said Yemenia could be subject to an "operating ban" in the EU if if it fails to provide reassurances it is dealing with recurring air safety problems.

Yemen's transport minister said the plane was thoroughly checked in May under Airbus supervision. "It was in line with international standards," Khaled Ibrahim al-Wazeer told Reuters.

France and the Comoros have enjoyed close ties since the islands' independence in 1975. France estimates 200,000 people from Comoros live in mainland France.