EgyptAir flight MS804 heading from Paris to Cairo with 66 people on board is believed to have crashed in the Mediterranean Sea after disappearing from radar. The Airbus A320 left the French capital’s Charles De Gaulle Airport at 10.09pm (BST) on Wednesday night and then went missing, three hours and 40 minutes into its journey.
The plane vanished 10 miles into Egyptian airspace, around 20 minutes before it was due to land.
A captain on board a merchant ship in the Mediterranean reported seeing a ‘flame in the sky’.
It was supposed touch down at 2.15am (BST). There were 56 passengers, including two babies and a child, and 10 crew on the flight.
The breakdown of the nationalities on board were: 30 Egyptians, 15 French, one British, one Belgian, one Iraqi, one Kuwaiti, one Saudi Arabian, one Chadian, one Portuguese, and one Algerian and one Canadian.
A French airport official said: ‘It did not land, that is all we can say for the moment.’ The French Prime Minister later added that ‘no theory can be ruled out’.
Ihab Raslan, a spokesman for the Egyptian civil aviation authority, told SkyNews Arabia that the plane most likely crashed into the sea.
Search and rescue teams have been sent to a specific location believed to be 40 miles from the Egyptian coast.
EgyptAir first reported on the disappearance of the flight, tweeting: ‘An informed source at EGYPTAIR stated that Flight no MS804,which departed Paris at 23:09 (CEST),heading to Cairo has disappeared from radar.’
Greek air traffic controllers said they spoke to the pilot while over Greece and did not report any problems.
The plane then disappeared 10 miles into Egyptian airspace and was travelling at 37,000ft.
The airline said the aircraft was ‘fading’ when air traffic control lost contact with the plane at 1.30am Cairo time.
Initial reports suggested the plane had not sent out a mayday, but the Egyptian military later said one of its units received a distress signal from the jet at 2.26am.
Egyptian officials have sent out search and rescue teams and have alerted surrounding countries.
Search and rescue teams, including members from Egyptian Armed Forces, are on site, according to Egypt Air
Greece has also joined the search and rescue operation.
Two aircraft, one C-130 and one early warning aircraft have been dispatched, officials at the Hellenic national defence general staff said.
They said one frigate was also heading to the area, and helicopters are on standby on the southern island of Karpathos for potential rescue or recovery operations.
Ahmed Abdel, the vice-chairman of EgyptAir holding company, said no distress signal had been sent, as far as he knew.
He added that there had been no reported problems with the plane when it left Paris.
The captain of the plane, Abdel said, had more than 6,000 flying hours.
This includes 2,000 on an A320.
He also said there was no special cargo on board and the airline was not informed about any dangerous objects on board.
As the plane was in Egyptian airspace, their air traffic controllers should have been in contact with the flight team.
However it does not necessarily mean the plane was over land at the time, as Egyptian air space stretches over the Mediterranean Sea.
According to flight schedules, it was the plane’s fifth flight of the day.
Shortly after news of the disappearance broke, the Egyptair website crashed.
The Airbus A320 is a short-to-mid range aircraft and is one of the most commonly used in the world that first entered circulation in 1986.
An EgyptAir plane was hijacked and diverted to Cyprus in March. A man who admitted to the hijacking and is described by Cypriot authorities as ‘psychologically unstable’ is in custody in Cyprus.
The incident renewed security concerns months after a Russian passenger plane was blown out of the sky over the Sinai Peninsula.
The Russian plane crashed in Sinai on Oct. 31, killing all 224 people on board. Moscow said it was brought down by an explosive device, and a local branch of the extremist Islamic State group has claimed responsibility for planting it.
In 1999, EgyptAir Flight 1990 crashed into the Atlantic Ocean near the Massachusetts island of Nantucket, killing all 217 people aboard.
U.S. investigators filed a final report that concluded its co-pilot switched off the autopilot and pointed the Boeing 767 downward.
But Egyptian officials rejected the notion of suicide altogether, insisting some mechanical reason caused the crash.
