– Flight MS804, a Paris-to-Cairo passenger plane carrying 66 people, disappeared off radar
– Search and rescue teams have been deployed to locate the Airbus A320
Egypt Air flight MS804 heading from Paris to Cairo has disappeared from radar with 66 people on board, including two babies and one child.
The plane, an Airbus A320, left Paris, France at 11.09pm local time on Wednesday night and was lost from ground radar at 2.30am Cairo time around 16km inside Egyptian airspace.
The plane vanished somewhere over the Mediterranean Sea, around half an hour before it was scheduled to arrive.
No distress signal had been sent, according to the airline’s vice-chairman, Ahmed Abdel.
It was carrying 56 passengers and 10 crew: two cockpit crew, five cabin crew and three security personnel.
EgyptAir has published a list of passengers by nationality: 15 French, 30 Egyptian, 1 British, 1 Belgium, 2 Iraqis, 1 Kuwaiti, 1 Saudi, 1 Sudanese, 1 Chadian, 1 Portuguese, 1 Algerian, 1 Canadian.
The pilot has more than 6,000 hours of flight experience, including more than 2,000 hours flying the same model aircraft, EgyptAir said. The co-pilot has nearly 3,000 flying hours.
The concerned authorities had been notified about the incident, search and rescue teams were now looking for the aircraft.
French president François Hollande has already spoken to his Egyptian counterpart, Abdel Fattah el-Sisi. The French government will hold an emergency meeting to the circumstances of the aircraft’s disappearance.
In March this year, an EgyptAir plane was hijacked and diverted to Cyprus. The attacker later surrendered and all hostages were released. Last October, a Russian passenger plane flying from Sharm el-Sheikh crashed over the Sinai peninsula killing all 224 people on board. The plane was reportedly brought down by an explosive device.
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