EgyptAir flight MS804 carrying 66 people from Paris to Cairo disappears from radargyptAir flight MS804 heading from Paris to Cairo has disappeared from radar with 66 people on board.
The Airbus A320 left the French capital’s Charles De Gaulle Airport at 11:09pm local time on Wednesday night and then went missing, three hours and 40 minutes into its journey.
The plane vanished 10 miles into Egyptian airspace over the Mediterranean Sea, around 20 minutes before it was due to land.
It was supposed touch down at 3:05am local time. There were 56 passengers, including two babies and a child, and 10 crew on the flight.
A French airport official said: ‘It did not land, that is all we can say for the moment.’
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.’
They confirmed the plane 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 02:45 Cairo time.
Egyptian officials have sent out search and rescue teams and have alerted surrounding countries.
Ahmed Abdel, the vice-chairman of EgyptAir holding company, told CNN that no distress signal had been sent, as far as he knew.
BREAKDOWN OF PEOPLE ON BOARD
56 passengers (including two infants and a child)
3 security personnel
2 cockpit crew
5 cabin crew crew
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.
He also said there was no special cargo on board and the airline was not informed about any dangerous objects on board.
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.
They then confirmed that the flight lost contact with air traffic controllers 10 miles inside Egyptian airspace.
It will be recalled that 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 the crash.
