EgyptAir Jet Disappears Over Mediterranean Sea

[kumarvishwas]

EgyptAir Jet Disappears Over Mediterranean Sea

An EgyptAir flight from Paris to Cairo is more likely to have been brought down by a "terror attack" than a technical fault, Egyptian Civil Aviation Minister Sherif Fathy has said.

A search is under way for the jet which has disappeared with 56 passengers and 10 crew on board - including one British national.

The fate of the plane is not yet known and officials have said it is too early to rule out any possibility, including terrorism, but all those on board are now feared to have died.

French President Francois Hollande said "unfortunately the information we have ... confirms to us the plane came down and is lost", suggesting it crashed near the southern Greek island of Karpathos where the search is focused.

At the same time, Greek defence minister Panos Kammenos said the aircraft was in Egyptian airspace and flying at 37,000ft when it made "sudden swerves" and plunged to 15,000ft.

He said it swerved "90 degrees left and then 360 degrees to the right" before vanishing.

Authorities are examining CCTV footage at Charles de Gaulle Airport - and investigating an account from the captain of a merchant ship who reported seeing a "flame in the sky" some 130 nautical miles south of Karpathos.

Mr Fathy said there were no known security issues with the passengers who boarded the jet, but further checks were being made.

EgyptAir Jet Disappears Over Mediterranean Sea

 

[rahul1117kumar]

EgyptAir flight MS804 plane crash: plane wreckage found near Greece

Greek TV reporting that large objects found in search for passenger jet that is believed to have crashed in the Mediterranean with 66 people on board.


EgyptAir flight MS804 crash: plane wreckage found near Greece – live | World news | The Guardian

 

[Abhi]

Very Sad News

 

[shawl_who]

some suspect terrorist did it :u

 

[kumarvishwas]

Hunt for EgyptAir Flight MS804 ongoing as mystery surrounds events on plane


EgyptAir appeared to wind back claims that wreckage found near the Greek island of Karpathos was from missing flight MS804, as Egyptian authorities said it was possible a terror attack had brought down the passenger jet.

The plane was believed to have crashed en route from Paris to Cairo on Thursday with 66 people on board. It disappeared from radar while over the Mediterranean Sea, about 10 miles into the Egyptian air zone.

Authorities said in a statement that wreckage was found near Karpathos Island, and EgyptAir had tweeted that the Egyptian Ministry of Foreign Affairs declared that the debris was from MS804. But the Egyptian flagship carrier's Vice President Ahmed Adel later told CNN that the company had been misinformed and the wreckage was "not part of our plane."

"The search and rescue is still going on," Adel said.

Meanwhile, Reuters cited Egyptian Prime Minister Sherif Ismail as saying that it was too early to rule out any explanation for the crash, including the possibility of an attack like the one blamed for bringing down a Russian Metrojet holiday airliner in Egypt's Sinai region in October.

And NBC News reported that, when pressed by reporters for his thoughts, Egyptian Civil Aviation Minister Sherif Fathy said the possibility of a terrorist attack was stronger than that of a technical failure.

There were conflicting reports about the insight that had been gathered so far about the flight.

A senior U.S. Intelligence official familiar with U.S. capabilities in the region told NBC News that "phenomenology" (infrared and multispectral images) indicated strongly that there was an explosion on MS804. The cause remained unclear, the source said. The U.S. has what is described as a "persistent stare" on the region, which collects everything from sound waves through multispectral images to pressure.

Officials from multiple U.S. agencies told Reuters, however, that a review of satellite imagery had not so far detected any sign of an explosion on board the flight.

Greek Defence Minister Panos Kammenos said that the Airbus A320 had swered 90 degrees to the left then spun through 360 degrees to the right before plunging from an altitude of 37,000 feet to 15,000 feet before disappearing from Greek radar screens, Reuters reported.

Greek officials also said that their air traffic controllers had communicated normally with the pilot as the plane exited Greek air space but then did not receive a response from the plane shortly afterward when they tried to hand communications to Egyptian air traffic controllers, according to an NBC News report.

Earlier, Egypt's aviation minister told a news conference that there are no known security issues with passengers on the missing plane, although further checks were underway.

Two U.S. intelligence officials told NBC News there was "nothing finite, nothing specific" in chatter about a coming attack on aviation. There is nothing out there yet to confirm "foul play," according to the officials.
The Greek army deployed two aircraft, a frigate and two helicopters to the search and rescue operation 130 nautical miles south-southeast of Karpathos. The announcement was in addition to shipping data purportedly showing other marine traffic changing course to help the operation.

Greece has banned flights from an area stretching 40 miles around the last point of signal from the flight.

EgyptAir was updating its Twitter account regularly and said Egyptian Prime Minister Sherif Ismail had arrived at the airline's crisis center after cutting short a visit to Jeddah, Saudi Arabia.
The airline urged restraint from the media in the reporting of the incident amid conflicting accounts about distress signals from the missing plane.

News of the incident emerged in the early hours of Thursday. In an Arabic-language Facebook post just before 5 a.m. local time, EgyptAir cited an "official source" as saying the flight, which took off from Paris' Charles de Gaulle Airport at 11.09 p.m. Paris time, had "disappeared from radar in the early hours of (the) day."

In a series of subsequent tweets and statements, EgyptAir said the plane was carrying 56 passengers, including one child and two infants, as well as three of the airline's security personnel and seven crew members, taking the total number of people on board to 66.

It also said the plane was manufactured in 2003. The "aircraft commander" had 6,275 hours of flight experience, including 2,101 on the same model plane, and the assistant pilot had 2,766 hours of experience, the airline said.

EgyptAir also released a list of the passengers' nationalities: 15 French, 30 Egyptians, two Iraqis and one person each from the U.K., Belgium, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, Sudan, Chad, Portugal, Algeria and Canada. Canda later said that there were two Canadians on baord.

French President Francois Hollande spoke to Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, according to a statement released by Hollande's office in the hours after the disappearance.

"They agreed to cooperate closely to establish as soon as possible the circumstances of the disappearance," the statement said. "The President of the Republic shares the anguish of the families affected by this tragedy."

http://www.cnbc.com/2016/05/19/search-for-egyptair-ms804-ongoing-debris-not-from-missing-flight-terror-more-likely-egyptian-officials-say.html