EGYPT13 MINUTES AGO
EgyptAir flight MS804 to Cairo disappears from radar
EgyptAir flight heading from Paris to Cairo has disappeared from radar with 66 people on board, the airline reports.
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The Airbus A320 went missing shortly after entering Egyptian airspace [FILE: Katie Christodoulou]
EgyptAir has confirmed that flight 804, traveling from Paris to Cairo, has disappeared with 56 passengers and 10 crew members on board.

According to EgyptAir, the plane took off from Paris' Charles De Gaulle Airport shortly after 11pm local time.

Three of those on board were children, including one infant, and three of the crew members were security personnel, EgyptAir reported.

Early Thursday morning, the plane disappeared from radar, the airline tweeted.


The Airbus A320 was flying at 37,000 feet when it disappeared 16km after entering Egyptian airspace, the airline said.

Egypt and Greece have launched maritime searches for missing flight, the Egyptian Army said.

EgyptAir has also published a list of passengers on board by nationality.

30 Egyptians, 15 French nationals, two Iraqis, one Brit, one Belgian, one Sudanese, one Chadian, one Portuguese, one Algerian, one Canadian, one Saudi and one Kuwaiti are on board, the airline said.

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 President talked to Egyptian President Sissi about the disappearance of the EgyptAir flight between Paris and Cairo. They agreed to cooperate closely to establish the circuмstances of the disappearance  as soon as possible," said a press release from the Elysee Palace.

"The President shares the anguish of the families affected by this tragedy."

Aviation experts said the plane probably lost contact with ground radar above the Mediterranean Sea.

"Apparently it was just short of Egyptian airspace, so it was likely over the Mediterranean, because the Greek airspace joins the Egyptian airspace around that area," aviation safety consultant Keith Mackey told Al Jazeera, "So that is probably where they will be looking."

"Egypt air should know exactly where the plane disappeared from radar," he said, "That would be the point where you begin your search. And its very likely that that point is over the Mediterranean.

"As day light comes, no doubt they will have airplanes and ships searching the area. If it crashed, it should not take long to find it in that area."

"When a plane disappears suddenly like this you certainly can not rule out terrorism or an explosion onboard the aircraft," Mackey said.

This is not the first air-safety crisis Egypt has faced recently.

In March,  a domestic  EgyptAir flight was hijacked  and forced to land in Cyprus.

On October 31 last year, Russia-bound Metrojet Flight 9268, operated by Russian airline Kogalymavia, crashed in the Sinai Peninsula in Egypt , killing all 224 people on board.

The plane certainly crashed -- with a little "smacsconic help", I'll bet ....

I think I remember seeing something on a news site about how the plane with 220 or something passengers was blown up ISIS. ISIS supposedly came out and said "Yeah, we blew up that Russian plane but, we got the wrong one"...  Really?

I wouldn't put this in WW3 forum, but whatever... the plane probably just crashed, is all.

Back in march they had a plane hi jacked.

This morning reports were saying that there was no distress signal given out by the crew of this plane, and one eyewitness on the ground said he saw a fireball in the sky.  The jet made several abrupt turns as it quickly descended from 37K to 10K feet, including a 360 degree turn.  

The captain, co-pilot and navigator would have to have been simultaneously snuffed out for there to have been no distress signal.

The fact that the plane was suddenly missing from radar below 9,000 ft. was not reported until 2 hours after it had been due to land.  Perhaps it fragmented at that point, causing the radar ID to be lost.  There was no explanation (so far) that radar was lost due to the curvature of the earth.

It sounds like the crew was instantly incapacitated and lost control of the plane, and then it fell in a sort of tailspin, probably killing the passengers before they came to any impact on the sea, due to loss of oxygen and cabin pressure, if not opening the fuselage to 600 mile-per-hr winds.  

Some manner of catastrophic failure in the cockpit area would be a likely scenario, which could be technical sabotage, poison gas or a bomb near the front of the plane.  There are too many redundant systems in modern jets to make accidental catastrophic failure a reasonable possibility:  that simply doesn't happen.  

They're confident they'll retrieve the flight data recorder since the Mediterranean Sea isn't very deep in that area, but it could take a few weeks, since the radio locating signal doesn't travel very far under water so they'll have to get physically close to it before they can hear its broadcast..........