Cairo – Egypt Airairline Vice President Ahmed Adel told CNN that searchers found the wreckage from the EgyptAir plane that crashed in the Mediterranean.
Subscribe to our Daily Roundup Email
The EgyptAir jetliner bound from Paris to Cairo with 66 people aboard crashed in the Mediterranean Sea early Thursday after swerving wildly in flight, authorities said, and Egypt said it may have been a terrorist attack.
There were no immediate signs of survivors.
EgyptAir Flight 804, an Airbus A320 with 56 passengers and 10 crew members, went down about halfway between the Greek island of Crete and Egypt’s coastline after takeoff from Charles de Gaulle Airport, authorities said.
Greek Defense Minister Panos Kammenos said the plane spun all the way around and suddenly lost altitude just before vanishing from radar screens around 2:45 a.m. Egyptian time.
He said it made a 90-degree left turn, then a full 360-degree turn toward the right, plummeting from 38,000 to 15,000 feet. It disappeared at about 10,000 feet, he said.
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.
In Cairo, Egyptian Civil Aviation Minister Sherif Fathi cautioned that the disaster was still under investigation, but he said the possibility it was a terror attack “is higher than the possibility of having a technical failure.”
Alexander Bortnikov, chief of Russia’s top domestic security agency, said: “In all likelihood it was a terror attack.”
The Egyptian military said it did not receive a distress call, and Egypt’s state-run daily Al-Ahram quoted an unidentified airport official as saying the pilot did not send one. The absence of a distress call suggests that whatever sent the aircraft plummeting into the sea was sudden and brief.
The plane’s erratic course suggested a number of possibilities, including some kind of catastrophic mechanical or structural failure — whether accidental or the result of sabotage — or a struggle over the controls with a hijacker in the cockpit.
Egyptian security officials said they were running background checks on the passengers to see if any had links to extremists.
cant cry too much, its their stupid dope friends, world is sleeping oh VA
Hashem Yarachem ,
oh Says #1 The passengers and crew onboard, including 2 infants and 1 child are innocent victims of this tragedy. Where’s your heart? Can’t cry too much??? really. Lucky for you it’s not your family that is subject to your heartless remark.
Shouldn’t they check for extremist connections before the flight, rather than after?
we learn that we are not to delight in even the demise of the Mitzrim, hence not saying the whole Hallel on pesach and spilling a drop of wine by the machos at the sader. These were our enemies and we’re told not to be happy about their deaths. Why then should we not cry for these innocent people that were murdered on the plane?