EgyptAir flight MS804 crash: airline retracts claim about plane wreckage find

Summary

Here’s what we know so far about EgyptAir flight MS804, which went missing en route from Paris to Cairo at 2.30am local time Thursday morning.
  • EgyptAir retracted its claim to have found wreckage belonging to MS804, falling in line with Greek authorities who said that floating debris did not belong to the plane. “We stand corrected,” Airline vice-president Ahmed Adel told CNN, adding that the recovered debris “is not our aircraft”.
  • President Abdel Fatah al-Sisi ordered the navy, air force and army to join with Egyptian, French, Greek and US forces searching the Mediterranean for debris. The debris falsely attributed to MS804 was found near the island of Karpathos, east of Crete.
  • Egypt’s aviation minister Sherif Fathy said terrorism was more likely than technical failure to be the cause of the crash. “The possibility of having a terror attack is higher than the possibility of having a technical [problem],” he told reporters. French president François Holland, Egyptian prime minister Sherif Ismail and the White House said that terrorism could not be ruled out.
  • No group has claimed responsibility for downing the aircraft, and search teams still have no sign of the Airbus A320 or the 66 people who were on board.
  • The plane is presumed crashed in the Mediterranean, east of Greece and about 10 miles into Egyptian airspace. “Family members of passengers and crew have been already informed and we extend our deepest sympathies to those affected,” EgyptAir said in a statement.
  • The plane made “sudden swerves” before dropping off radar over the Mediterranean, Greek defense minister Panos Kammeno said.The plane made a 90-degree turn left, and then dropped from 37,000 feet to 15,000 feet before swerving 360 degrees right, he said. 
  • The plane was carrying 56 passengers and 10 crew: two cockpit crew, five cabin crew and three security personnel. The airline said two babies and one child were on board. Among the passengers were30 Egyptians, 15 French, two Iraqis, and one person each from the UK, Belgium, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, Sudan, Chad, Portugal, Algeria and Canada.
  • The plane, on its fifth journey of the day, was traveling at 37,000 feet when it disappeared from radar. It had made a stop in Tunisia before flying to Paris.
  • EgyptAir says the captain has 6,275 flying hours, including 2,101 on the A320; the copilot has 2,766. The plane was manufactured in 2003.

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