Egypt and Greece mounted a marine search-and-rescue operation early Thursday for an EgyptAir passenger jet with 66 people on board that disappeared over the Mediterranean shortly before it was due to land in Cairo, the airline and government officials said.
Flight 804, which departed Paris just after 11 p.m. on Wednesday, disappeared at 2:45 a.m. Cairo time, shortly after it entered Egyptian airspace, EgyptAir said on its Twitter account. The plane had been traveling at an altitude of 37,000 feet and was carrying 56 passengers including three children.
EgyptAir said it last made contact with the plane at 2:30 a.m.
The Egyptian military said that it had deployed aircraft and naval vessels to search for the plane in cooperation with Greece. “We are looking everywhere on land and at sea,” Mohamed Samir, a military spokesman, said.
Greece said it sent two aircraft — a C-130 and an early-warning aircraft — to the area.
There was no immediate indication of what happened to the plane. Aviation security in Egypt has been under intense scrutiny since a bomb brought down a Russian airliner over the Sinai Peninsula in October, killing all 224 people on board.
A list of the nationalities of the passengers released by Egypt said that 30 were Egyptian, 15 were from France and the remainder were from at least eight other countries, including Algeria, Belgium, Britain and several Persian Gulf nations.
In addition to the passengers, the airline said, three EgyptAir security personnel and seven crew members were on board.
A list of the nationalities of the passengers released by Egypt said that 30 were Egyptian, 15 were from France and the remainder were from at least eight other countries, including Algeria, Belgium, Britain and several Persian Gulf nations.
In addition to the passengers, the airline said, three EgyptAir security personnel and seven crew members were on board.
Ehab Mohy el-Deen, the head of Egypt’s air navigation authority, said that Greek air traffic controllers notified their Egyptian counterparts that they had lost contact with the plane.
In a flurry of posts on Twitter on Thursday, EgyptAir emphasized the experience of the crew of the missing airliner, an Airbus A320. The pilot has more than 6,000 flying hours, and the co-pilot has 2,700 hours, the airline said.
At the airport in Cairo, relatives and friends waiting for the passengers were shepherded into a separate area, many of them red-faced and crying. Aviation security officials banned journalists from filming and interviewing people, saying they were acting on orders from the Interior Ministry, which controls the police.
A spokesman for France’s Foreign Ministry, Romain Nadal, responded by text to a question on the status of the flight, saying that the government was in the process of verifying the plane’s disappearance.
In the October crash of the Russian jetliner, the plane broke up in midair 23 minutes after takeoff from the Red Sea resort of Sharm el Sheikh. The Islamic State, whose local affiliate is fighting the Egyptian military in the Sinai Peninsula, claimed that it brought down the plane, an Airbus A321-200.
Egypt initially denied that the crash was connected to terrorism, even as Russia and Britain said they that believed a bomb was responsible. But in February, President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi said that the flight had been brought down by terrorists, although he did not specify which group.
via NYTimes
