“I don’t deny the hypothesis of a terrorist attack or something technical”.
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No group has claimed responsibility for downing the aircraft and Egypt’s aviation minister, Sherif Fathi, said he did not want to prematurely draw conclusions, but added: “The possibility of having a different action or a terror attack, is higher than the possibility of having a technical failure”.
It disappeared from radar early Thursday as it flew to Cairo – what should have been about a 3½-hour flight.
The BBC has learned the plane that disappeared was forced to make an emergency landing in 2013 after the pilot noticed the engine overheating, but an official report said the defect had been repaired.
In October 1999, EgyptAir Flight 990 plummeted 33,000 feet into the ocean south of Nantucket with 217 people aboard.
Civil Aviation Authority chief Konstantinos Litzerakos said: “The pilot was in a good mood and he thanked them in Greek”.
An Egyptian search plane later located two orange items believed to be from the aircraft, 230 miles southeast of Crete, a Greek military official said, speaking on condition of anonymity in accordance with regulations.
– President Barack Obama has been briefed on the situation, said Lisa Monaco, assistant to the president for homeland security and counterterrorism.
“It turned 90 degrees left and then a 360-degree turn toward the right, dropping from 38,000 to 15,000 feet and then it was lost at about 10,000 feet”, said Greek Defense Minister Panos Kammenos.
The crash of state-controlled EgyptAir Flight 804 is the latest blow to a country becoming known for airline disasters, terrorism and economic and political troubles.
Greek air traffic controllers spoke to the pilot as the jet flew over the island of Kea, in what was thought to be the last broadcast from the aircraft, and no problems were reported. Everything seemed fine at that point. The carrier’s account fits closely with an account from Konstantinos Lintzerakos, director of Greece’s Civil Aviation Authority. Everything seemed fine until the plane, now over the eastern Mediterranean Sea, approached Egyptian airspace. Forty seconds later, radar contact was lost, the authority said.
The weather was clear and calm when the plane crossed over the Mediterranean, CNN meteorologist Pedram Javaheri said.
Aboard were 56 passengers and 10 cabin crew members and security officers.
Among the victims: 30 Egyptian, 15 French, one British, one Belgian, two Iraqi, one Kuwaiti, one Saudi, one Sudanese, one Chadian, one Portuguese, one Algerian and one Canadian. / AFP PHOTO / KHALED DESOUKIKHALED DESOUKI/AFP/Getty Images Relatives of passengers who were flying in an EgyptAir plane that vanished from radar en route from Paris to Cairo leave a services hall at Cairo airport on May 19, 2016.
There was no special cargo on the flight and no notification of any unsafe goods aboard, according to Capt. Ahmed Adel of EgyptAir.
“The plane vanished while cruising – the safest part of the journey”, CNN aviation correspondent Richard Quest said.
It said the system showed that at 02:26 local time on Thursday (00:26 GMT) smoke was detected in the Airbus A320 toilet. The plane’s captain had about 6,000 flying hours, he said.
The U.S. Navy has joined the search effort for the EgyptAir flight.
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The vice president of EgyptAir said that the wreckage of their crashed airliner has been found in the Meditteranean Sea, and that the operation is now a search and recovery mission, which means there are no survivors.
