EgyptAir says plane carrying 66 has disappeared

An EgyptAir flight from Paris to Cairo carrying 66 people disappeared from radar early this morning, the airline said.

Cairo - An EgyptAir flight from Paris to Cairo carrying 66 people disappeared from radar early Thursday morning, the airline said.

The plane most likely crashed into the sea, Ihab Raslan, a spokesman for the Egyptian civil aviation authority, told SkyNews Arabia.

He said the plane was about to enter Egyptian airspace when it disappeared from radar.

The airline, however, said the Airbus A320 had vanished 16km after it entered Egyptian airspace.

EgyptAir Flight 804 was lost from radar at 2:45am local time when it was flying at 37,000 feet, the airline said.

Egyptian armed forces were searching for the plane, which was carrying 56 passengers, including one child and two babies, and 10 crew. The pilot had 6 000 flight hours. Earlier, the airline said 69 people were on board.

Airbus is aware of the disappearance, but “we have no official information at this stage of the certitude of an accident,” the company's spokesman Jacques Rocca said.

The Paris airport authority and the French civil aviation authority would not immediately comment.

Greece joined the search and rescue operation for the EgyptAir flight with two aircraft, one C-130 and one early warning aircraft, officials at the Hellenic National Defense 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.

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, US 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.

AP