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Egypt and Greece Mount Search for Missing EgyptAir Plane EgyptAir Flight 804 Disappears Over Mediterranean
(about 2 hours later)
CAIRO — 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. CAIRO — An EgyptAir passenger jet that took off from Paris with 66 people on board suddenly disappeared over the Mediterranean Sea on Thursday morning, shortly before it was due to land in Cairo.
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 Flight 804 departed Paris at 11:09 p.m. on Wednesday. At 2:26 a.m., the pilot spoke to Greek air traffic controllers, and nothing seemed out of the ordinary, officials said. Three or four minutes later, the plane last made radar contact.
EgyptAir said it last made contact with the plane at 2:30 a.m. At 2:37 a.m., shortly after entering Egyptian air space, the plane made a 90-degree turn to the left and then a full circle to the right, plunging to 9,000 feet from 37,000 feet and disappearing from radar, the Greek defense minister, Panos Kammenos, said at a news conference Thursday afternoon.
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. As the authorities mounted an intense search-and-rescue operation focused around the Greek island of Karpathos, between Crete and Rhodes, President François Hollande of France confirmed that the plane had crashed and acknowledged that “the terrorist hypothesis” was one of several that investigators were looking into.
Greece said it sent two aircraft — a C-130 and an early-warning aircraft — to the area. “The information that we have been able to gather — the prime minister, the members of the government, and, of course, the Egyptian authorities — unfortunately confirm for us that this plane crashed at sea and has been lost,” Mr. Hollande said at the Élysée Palace, after speaking by telephone with President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi of Egypt.
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. Mr. Hollande said that “no hypothesis was being ruled out,” and that the three countries were hoping to recover “debris that would enable us to know the truth.”
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. He added, “When we have the truth, we must draw all the conclusions, whether it is an accident or another hypothesis, which everybody has in mind: the terrorist hypothesis.”
In addition to the passengers, the airline said, three EgyptAir security personnel and seven crew members were on board. Sherif Fathy, the Egyptian minister for civil aviation, said at a news conference at Cairo airport, “We have no other information other than there is a missing plane.”
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. “There are many possible reasons for this situation,” he said. “What’s certain is that something has happened. I will not use the term ‘crash’ until I find wreckage. The probability of a crash could be high. But as a professional, I’m choosing my words carefully.”
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. 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. And France has tightened airport security after a series of terrorist attacks last year.
Flight 804 was carrying 56 passengers, including three children, seven crew members and three members of airline security personnel.
A list of the passengers’ nationalities, released by the airline, said that 30 were from Egypt, 15 from France, two from Iraq and one each from Algeria, Belgium, Britain, Canada, Chad, Kuwait, Portugal, Saudi Arabia and Sudan.
EgyptAir said it had last made radar contact with the plane at 2:30 a.m., when it was 175 miles off the Egyptian coast. (Greek officials put the last radar contact at about a minute earlier.)
At 3:14 a.m. Cairo time, the Greek authorities began a search operation, deploying a C-130 military transport plane. At 4:26 a.m. — nearly two hours after the last radar contact — the plane emitted a signal, although it was not clear whether that was an emergency distress signal sent by a crew member or an automated signal from the plane’s onboard computers.
“We don’t know if the pilot had something to do with this or if it is just the plane sending it,” said Ihab Raslan, a spokesman for the Egyptian Civil Aviation Ministry.
Greece said it had sent two planes, including the C-130, along with the naval frigate Nikiforos Fokas and two Super Puma rescue helicopters to an area around Karpathos, in the southern Aegean Sea.
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,” said Mohamed Samir, a military spokesman.
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.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 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.
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. Speaking on the French radio station RTL, Prime Minister Manuel Valls said that the French authorities were still gathering information about the disappearance and that, “at this stage, no hypotheses on the causes of this disappearance can be ruled out.”
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. In the October crash of the Russian jetliner, the plane broke up in midair 23 minutes after takeoff from the Red Sea resort city of Sharm el Sheikh. The Islamic State, whose local affiliate is fighting the Egyptian military in the Sinai Peninsula, claimed that it had brought down the plane, an Airbus A321-200.
Egypt initially denied that the crash was connected to terrorism. But in February, Mr. Sisi said that the flight had been brought down by terrorists, although he did not specify which group.
The crash dealt a crippling blow to Egypt’s beleaguered tourism industry, which had already declined sharply in recent years. It also helped precipitate a decline in the value of the Egyptian currency in recent months.The crash dealt a crippling blow to Egypt’s beleaguered tourism industry, which had already declined sharply in recent years. It also helped precipitate a decline in the value of the Egyptian currency in recent months.
Russia and Britain have suspended flights to Sharm el Sheikh since the crash. The Egyptian investigation has yet to officially identify the exact cause. But President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia and Mr. Sisi discussed the resumption of flights in a telephone call on May 10, according to a statement from the Kremlin. Russia and Britain have suspended flights to Sharm el Sheikh since the crash. The Egyptian investigation has yet to officially identify the cause. But President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia and Mr. Sisi discussed the resumption of flights in a telephone call on May 10, according to a statement from the Kremlin.
The last major crash involving an EgyptAir plane occurred in 2002 when a Boeing 737 traveling to Tunis from Cairo crashed into a hill near the Tunis airport, killing 18 of the 62 people on board. The last major crash involving an EgyptAir plane occurred in 2002, when a Boeing 737 traveling to Tunis from Cairo crashed into a hill near the Tunis airport, killing 18 of the 62 people on board.
In March, a hijacker wearing a fake explosives vest diverted an EgyptAir domestic flight to the island of Cyprus, where an hourslong standoff result in his arrest and no injuries to passengers. The Cypriot authorities later described the man, Seif Eldin Mustafa, who said he wanted to free female prisoners from Egyptian jails, as “psychologically disturbed.” He is currently battling extradition to Egypt. In March, a hijacker wearing a fake explosives vest diverted an EgyptAir domestic flight to the island of Cyprus, where an hourslong standoff resulted in his arrest and no injuries to passengers. The Cypriot authorities later described the man, Seif Eldin Mustafa, who said he wanted to free female prisoners from Egyptian jails, as “psychologically disturbed.” He is currently battling extradition to Egypt.
Security at Charles de Gaulle Airport outside Paris was tightened after the terrorist attacks on the French capital last November, and scrutiny of passengers and luggage was also stepped up in the wake of the bombing of Brussels Airport in March. Security at Charles de Gaulle Airport outside Paris was tightened after the terrorist attacks in and around the French capital in November, and scrutiny of passengers and luggage was also stepped up in the wake of the bombing of Brussels Airport in March.
After the November attacks, French authorities have used the threat of terrorism to justify raids of employee lockers at Charles de Gaulle as well as a systematic review of the roughly 87,000 airport employees who have badges giving them access to secure areas that include the tarmac, baggage handling and cargo storage. Those reviews have led the authorities to revoke dozens of badges for security reasons, according to the airport police. After the November attacks, French authorities have used the threat of terrorism to justify raids of employee lockers at Charles de Gaulle, as well as a systematic review of the roughly 87,000 airport employees who have badges giving access to secure areas that include the tarmac, baggage handling and cargo storage. Those reviews have led the authorities to revoke dozens of badges for security reasons, according to the airport police.
Rules that ban passengers from carrying liquids, gels and aerosols in hand luggage were also extended to apply to airline and airport personnel as well as anyone with access to secure areas of the airport. Rules that ban passengers from carrying liquids, gels and aerosols in hand luggage were also extended to apply to airline and airport personnel, as well as anyone with access to secure areas of the airport.
Egypt has come under criticism in the past for its lack of transparency in aviation accidents. In 1999, an EgyptAir flight crashed into the Atlantic Ocean shortly after takeoff from John F. Kennedy Airport in New York, killing all 217 people on board. Egypt has come under criticism in the past for its lack of transparency in aviation accidents. In 1999, an EgyptAir flight crashed into the Atlantic Ocean shortly after takeoff from John F. Kennedy Airport in New York, killing all 217 on board.
Although American investigators concluded that the co-pilot had steered the airplane in the sea, Egypt rejected the idea of suicide and still insists that the crash was caused by an unspecified mechanical failure. Although American investigators concluded that the co-pilot had steered the airplane into the sea, Egypt rejected the idea of suicide and still insists that the crash was caused by an unspecified mechanical failure.