Johannesburg - Aviation investigators on the Comoros islands reported Friday that the flight recorder of the Yemenia Airways plane which crashed in the Indian Ocean on June 30 had been located.

The officials said preparations were now underway to try to recover the black box of the Airbus A310 plane, which went down with 153 people on board. Only a young girl survived the crash.

The plane, en route from Yemen to Moroni, the capital of the Comoros Islands, went down about 10 kilometres offshore in the early hours of June 30. (dpa)