66 passengers and crew are feared dead after EgyptAir flight MS804, an Airbus A320, crashed into the Mediterranean en route to Cairo International Airport from Paris Charles De Gaulle Airport, Paris. The flight left Paris just before Midnight (GMT+1) on Wednesday 18th May and disappeared from radar screens twenty minutes short of Cairo while still over the Mediterranean Sea.
A certain amount of unidentified debris has been washed up on the Greek island of Karpathos, while at approximately 7pm (GMT+1) Egyptian authorities announced that debris recovered from the Mediterranean was from the MS804 flight.
The Greek defense minister, Panos Kammenos, stated that the EgyptAir plane “suddenly” started veering to the right and left shortly before disappearing from radar, adding that “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.”
When the plane disappeared at 2.24am local time (GMT+2), the course taken, together with a lack of any distress call from the pilots, has led to the conclusion that a catastrophic event took place and, as a consequence, terrorism cannot be ruled out. This is of particular concern to Egypt’s tourist industry as this is the third major incident involving a plane in Egyptian airspace in just over six months.
On October 31, 2015 a Metrojet Airbus A321 was brought down over the Sinai Peninsula by an onboard bomb shortly after leaving Sharm el-Sheikh Airport when bound for Pulkovo Airport, Saint Petersburg, killing all 224 passengers and crew on board. On March 29 this year, an EgyptAir A-320 was hijacked while flying between Alexandria and Cairo and was forced to land at Larnaca Airport in Cyprus.
French officials are examining CCTV footage to establish who had access to the plane while in Paris, as well as looking for any signs of suspicious behaviour, while Paris prosecutors have already opened an investigation. According to EgyptAir, the passenger manifest indicates that 30 Egyptians, 15 French, two Iraqis, and one passenger from Britain, Sudan, Chad, Portugal, Algeria, Canada, Belgium, Kuwait and Saudi Arabia were on board.
