The search and rescue operation team has stated it received a distress message from the plane emergency devices at 4.26am Cairo time.
Advertisement
Reuters, quoting Egyptian state newspaper Ahram, said that the crew had made no distress call and that the last contact was 10 minutes before plane vanished.
Flight MS804 took off from Paris’ Charles de Gaulle Airport last night and was flying at 37,000 feet when it disappeared shortly after entering Egyptian airspace. A few hours later, those aviation officials announced that the plane had crashed.
No Americans were aboard the aircraft, according to an initial passenger manifest released by the airline.
Greek and Egyptian armed forces are involved in the effort, and France has offered to send boats and planes.
Greece also joined the search and rescue operation, officials at the Hellenic National Defence General Staff said.
EgyptAir did not provide information of the nationalities of those on board.
The aircraft most likely crashed into the sea, Ihab Raslan, a spokesman for the Egyptian civil aviation authority, told SkyNews Arabia.
Ahmed Adel, vice president of EgyptAir, told CNN that of the 56 passengers aboard, two were infants and one was a child.
Egypt and Greece have launched maritime searches for the missing flight, the Egyptian Army said.
The airline said the Egyptian military had received an emergency signal from the aircraft, an apparent reference to an Emergency Locator Transmitter, or ELT, a battery powered device created to automatically give out a signal in the event of a sudden loss of altitude or impact. An EgyptAir flight from Paris to Cairo carrying 66 people disappeared from radar early Thursday morning, the airline said. It also added, on its Twitter feed, that the aircraft commander has 6275 of flying hours including 2101 flying hours on Airbus 320 and that the co-pilot has 2766 flying hours.
The French government will hold an emergency meeting at 06:30 GMT to discuss the plane’s disappearance, the French President Francois Hollande’s office has said.
The Paris airport authority and the French civil aviation authority would not immediately comment.
However the Egyptian military later said it had received no distress message from the aircraft, in a statement on its website.
It it now hosting passengers’ families near Cairo Airport and providing doctors and translators.
“No theory can be ruled out on the cause of this disappearance”, said Valls.
“When a plane disappears suddenly like this you certainly cannot rule out terrorism or an explosion onboard the aircraft”, Mackey said.
Advertisement
The plane was travelling from Alexandria to Cairo when it was forced to divert to Cyprus due to a man wearing a fake suicide belt.
