Airline says plane, which took off from France’s Charles de Gaulle airport late on Wednesday night, has gone missing with 66 people on board
Thursday, May 19, 2016
An EgyptAir passenger jet carrying 66 passengers has vanished en route to Cairo.
The flight departed from Paris on Wednesday evening and lost contact with ground crews at 2.45am local time, about 16km (10 miles) inside Egyptian airspace.
The 12-year-old Airbus A320-232 was about 40 minutes from its destination. It was the aircraft’s fifth flight of the day, including journeys to Asmara, Eritrea and Carthage in Tunisia.
The airline’s vice-chairman, Ahmed Abdel, told CNN the plane made no distress call.
There were “no recorded snags coming out of Cairo” or reported before leaving Charles de Gaulle, he said.
The captain had also recorded more than 6,000 flying hours, including 2,000 hours in that model, Abdel said. There had not been any special cargo or notification of dangerous goods on board, he added.