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| Air Controllers Lose Contact With Air Algérie Plane | |
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| PARIS — A jetliner with 116 people onboard disappeared overnight Thursday on a flight across the Sahara from Burkina Faso to Algeria. | PARIS — A jetliner with 116 people onboard disappeared overnight Thursday on a flight across the Sahara from Burkina Faso to Algeria. |
| Air traffic controllers lost contact with the plane, a Boeing MD-83, about 50 minutes after it took off from Ouagadougou, the capital of Burkina Faso, bound for Algiers, according to the official Algerian news agency. | Air traffic controllers lost contact with the plane, a Boeing MD-83, about 50 minutes after it took off from Ouagadougou, the capital of Burkina Faso, bound for Algiers, according to the official Algerian news agency. |
| The route of the plane, Air Algérie Flight 5017, would have taken the plane over large desert areas where Islamic militant groups have been active, including northern Mali. But those militants are not known to possess heavy weapons that could strike an aircraft at cruising altitude. Reuters, citing an Algerian official, reported that the aircraft was over Mali when it was last heard from. | The route of the plane, Air Algérie Flight 5017, would have taken the plane over large desert areas where Islamic militant groups have been active, including northern Mali. But those militants are not known to possess heavy weapons that could strike an aircraft at cruising altitude. Reuters, citing an Algerian official, reported that the aircraft was over Mali when it was last heard from. |
| Two French fighter jets that were on patrol over northern Mali have been diverted to try to locate the plane, according to Col. Gilles Jarron, a French Army spokesman. “Two Mirage 2000 jets were given the mission to search the area after reports of a suspected accident,” Colonel Jarron said Thursday afternoon. “They are in the air, searching the area between its last known destination along its most probable route.” | Two French fighter jets that were on patrol over northern Mali have been diverted to try to locate the plane, according to Col. Gilles Jarron, a French Army spokesman. “Two Mirage 2000 jets were given the mission to search the area after reports of a suspected accident,” Colonel Jarron said Thursday afternoon. “They are in the air, searching the area between its last known destination along its most probable route.” |
| The plane belonged to a Spanish company, Swiftair, and was operated by Air Algérie. Swiftair confirmed in a statement from its offices in Madrid that it had lost contact with the plane, and said it was carrying 110 passengers and a crew of six. “In keeping with procedures, Air Algérie has launched its emergency plan,” the state news agency quoted the Algerian airline as saying in a statement. | |
| Weather reports for the region indicated that there were thunderstorms and gusty winds overnight in the area of Africa that Flight 5017 would normally have crossed. Reuters quoted a diplomat in Bamako, Mali, as saying that the region experienced a strong sandstorm. | |
| The disappearance of the plane comes at a time when the aviation industry is already reeling from the downing of Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 over eastern Ukraine last Thursday, the crash of TransAsia Airways Flight 222 in Taiwan on Wednesday and the suspension of flights to and from Tel Aviv this week because of rocket fire from Gaza. The Federal Aviation Administration lifted its ban on American flights to Israel overnight. | |
| The government of Burkina Faso said in a statement that the aircraft’s last contact with ground control came a few minutes after it had passed out of the country’s air space. The crew contacted air traffic controllers in Niamey, Niger, at 1:47 a.m. local time, informing them that the plane had encountered rough weather. | |
| “Search and rescue teams from Burkina, Mali, Niger and Algeria, in collaboration with France, have been activated in northern Mali,” the statement said. | |
| Officials gave varying counts of the nationalities of the passengers on the flight. The government statement listed 51 French citizens, 27 people from Burkina Faso, 8 Lebanese, 6 Algerians, 5 Canadians, 4 Germans, 2 people from Luxembourg, and one each from Switzerland, Belgium, Egypt, Ukraine, Nigeria, Cameroon and Mali. | |
| Preliminary figures offered by an Air Algérie representative, Kara Terki, at a news conference in Burkina Faso and reported by Reuters were slightly lower for France, Burkina Faso and Algeria and did not include the Germans or Canadians. Lebanese officials gave a higher figure, 10, for their citizens on the plane, and the Spanish pilots’ union said all six crew members were Spanish, news agencies reported. Mr. Terki said that all the passengers were bound for destinations beyond Algiers, in Europe, the Middle East or Canada, Reuters said. | |
| There were also varying accounts of when and where the aircraft was last heard from. The Algerian prime minister, Abdelmalek Sellal said on Algerian state television that the crew communicated with air traffic controllers in Gao, Mali, about 10 minutes before contact was lost, according to The Associated Press, while Burkina Faso referred to the communication with Niger as the plane’s last message. | |
| The French transport minister, Frédéric Cuvillier, said in Paris that the plane vanished over northern Mali but did not give a more specific location, The A.P. reported. | |
| The office of the French president, François Hollande, said he would hold an emergency cabinet meeting at 5 p.m. on the missing plane. | |
| According to Ascend, an aviation consultancy in London, Swiftair owns five MD-83 jets, and two of them were leased to Air Algérie in June. One of those planes was built by McDonnell Douglas in 1996, and the other in 1989. The manufacturer merged with Boeing in 1997, and the combined company discontinued production of MD-80 series jets two years later. | According to Ascend, an aviation consultancy in London, Swiftair owns five MD-83 jets, and two of them were leased to Air Algérie in June. One of those planes was built by McDonnell Douglas in 1996, and the other in 1989. The manufacturer merged with Boeing in 1997, and the combined company discontinued production of MD-80 series jets two years later. |
| Air Algérie’s last major accident was in 2003, when Flight 6289, a Boeing 737, crashed shortly after takeoff from Tamanrasset in southern Algeria on its way to Algiers. Mechanical failure was blamed for the crash, which killed 102 people. More recently, an Algerian C-130 Hercules military transport plane bound for Constantine in the northeast crashed into a mountainside in February, killing 77 of the 78 people on board. Strong winds and poor visibility were blamed. |