66 Feared Dead in Latest Plane Disappearance

19 May, 2016

An EgyptAir jet carrying 66 passengers and crew on a flight from Paris to Cairo disappeared from radar over the Mediterranean sea, Egypt’s national airline said. French President Francois Hollande confirmed the aircraft “came down and is lost”.

Egyptian Prime Minister Sherif Ismail announced a search was under way for the missing Airbus A320 but it was too early to rule out any explanation, including an attack like the one blamed for bringing down a Russian airliner over Egypt’s Sinai peninsula last year.

Officials with the airline and the Egyptian civil aviation department told Reuters they believed the Airbus had crashed into the Mediterranean between Greece and Egypt.

In Athens, Greek Defence Minister Panos Kammenos said the plane made sudden swerves in mid-air before disappearing.

Greece deployed aircraft and a frigate to the area to help with the search. A Greek defense ministry source said authorities were also investigating an account from the captain of a merchant ship who reported a ‘flame in the sky’ about 130 nautical miles south of the island of Karpathos.

According to Greece’s civil aviation chief, calls from Greek air traffic controllers to the jet went unanswered just before it left the country’s airspace, and it disappeared from radar screens soon afterwards.

By early afternoon, the search in the Mediterranean had yet to turn up anything. “Absolutely nothing has been found so far,” a senior Greek coastguard official told Reuters.

There was no official suggestion of whether the disappearance was due to technical failure or any other reason such as sabotage by ultra-hardline Islamists, who have targeted airports, airliners and tourist sites in Europe, Egypt, Tunisia and other Middle Eastern countries over the past few years.

The aircraft was carrying 56 passengers – with one child and two infants among them – and 10 crew, EgyptAir said. They included 30 Egyptian and 15 French nationals, along with citizens of 10 other countries.

Asked if he could rule out that terrorists were behind the incident, Prime Minister Ismail told reporters: “We cannot exclude anything at this time or confirm anything. All the search operations must be concluded so we can know the cause.”

In Paris, Hollande also said the cause remained unknown. “Unfortunately the information we have … confirms to us that the plane came down and is lost,” he said. “No hypothesis can be ruled out, nor can any be favored over another.”

With its archeological sites and Red Sea resorts, Egypt is traditionally a popular destination for Western tourists. But the industry has been badly hit following the downing of the Russian Metrojet flight last October, killing all 224 people on board, as well as by an Islamist insurgency and a string of bomb attacks.

Greek air traffic controllers spoke to the pilot as the jet flew over the island of Kea, in what was thought to be the last broadcast from the aircraft, and no problems were reported.

But just ahead of the handover to Cairo airspace, calls to the plane went unanswered, before it dropped off radars shortly after exiting Greek airspace, Kostas Litzerakis, the head of Greece’s civil aviation department, told Reuters.

“During the transfer procedure to Cairo airspace, about seven miles before the aircraft entered the Cairo airspace, Greek controllers tried to contact the pilot but he was not responding,” he said.

Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi was to chair a national security council meeting on Thursday morning, a statement from his office said. It did not say if the meeting would discuss the plane.

At Cairo airport, authorities ushered families of the passengers and crew into a closed-off waiting area.

EgyptAir said on its Twitter account that Flight MS804 had departed Paris at 23:09 (CEST). It disappeared at 02:30 a.m. at an altitude of 37,000 feet (11,280 meters) in Egyptian air space, about 280 km (165 miles) from the Egyptian coast before it was due to land at 03:15 a.m.

Signals from the jet’s transponder ended abruptly while it was cruising at 37,000 feet and a speed of 534 knots, according to aviation website FlightRadar24.com. The A320 was also not deviating from its flight path when it disappeared, the data showed.

Russia and Western governments have said the plane that crashed on Oct. 31 was probably brought down by a bomb, and the Islamic State militant group said it had smuggled an explosive device on board.

That crash called into question Egypt’s campaign to eradicate Islamist militancy. Islamist militants have stepped up attacks on Egyptian soldiers and police.

Reuters

Image Bloomberg Twitter

Mentioned In This Post: