An EgyptAir flight carrying 66 passengers and crew on a flight from Paris to Cairo has disappeared from radar over the Mediterranean Sea, Egypt’s national airline said on Thursday.
Officials with the airline and the Egyptian civil aviation department said they believed the Airbus A320 had crashed into the sea. Egypt Air said the plane sent an emergency signal — possibly from an emergency beacon attached to the plane — at 04:26 a.m. on Thursday, two hours after it disappeared from radar screens.
In water crashes, an underwater locator beacon attached to the aircraft’s flight recorders starts to emit a signal or ping. This helps the search and rescue teams to locate the boxes, and the location of the crash.
The aircraft was carrying 56 passengers, including one child and two infants, and 10 crew, EgyptAir said.
“The theory that the plane crashed and fell is now confirmed after the preliminary search and after it did not arrive at any of the nearby airports,” said a senior aviation source, who declined to be identified.
“All causes for the disaster are open, whether it is a major technical fault or a terrorist action or any other circumstance. This will be ascertained when we inspect the plane’s wreckage and transcribe its black boxes.”
The nationalities of those onboard are as follows; 1 Sudanese, 1 Chadian, 1 Portuguese, 1 Algerian, 1 Canadian, 15 French, 30 Egyptian, 1 British, 1 Belgium, 2 Iraqis, 1 Kuwaiti, 1 Saudi
CCTV’s reporter in Egypt confirms that the Egyptian Military DENY receiving any distress signals from the vanished plane.
Egyptair Flight no MS804 departed Paris at 23:09 (CEST) Wednesday night heading to Cairo has disappeared from radar.
The French foreign office has set up an emergency phone line for people worried about relatives and friends on flight MS804 +33 1 43 17 55 95
