CAIRO — The EgyptAir red-eye from Paris to Cairo, an Airbus A320 jetliner less than half full, had just entered Egyptian airspace early Thursday on the final part of its journey.
Suddenly the twin-engine jetliner jerked hard to the left, then hard to the right, circled and plunged 28,000 feet, disappearing from the radar screens of Greek and Egyptian air traffic controllers.
That began a day of emergency rescuers scrambling, officials issuing conflicting information and experts speculating about the fate of EgyptAir Flight 804, which carried at least 66 people from roughly a dozen nations and was presumed to have crashed into the Mediterranean Sea.
EgyptAir initially said wreckage of the plane had been found with the help of searchers from Greece, but a senior official of the airline speaking on CNN retracted that assertion hours later. Egyptian officials suggested that terrorism was a more likely cause for the disappearance than mechanical failure, but others cautioned that it was premature to make that judgment.
The loss of the flight was the second civilian aviation disaster to hit Egypt in the past seven months. It resurrected fears and speculation about the safety and security of Egyptian aviation, which has a history of lapses — as well as the specter of a security breach in Paris, where the plane took off.
The mystery of the plane’s demise also raised broader questions about the vulnerability of civilian air travel to terrorism. Flight 804 went missing against the backdrop of threats from militant extremist groups like the Islamic State and Al Qaeda, with networks linking Europe to the Middle East.
By Thursday evening, no group had claimed responsibility.
With differing reports about precisely what wreckage had been discovered, President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi of Egypt ordered the armed forces to “take all measures necessary” to find the remains of the plane, his office said in a statement.
The statement also said work had begun immediately “to unravel the circumstances surrounding the disappearance of the Egyptian aircraft and establish its causes.”
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As news of the missing plane spread in Cairo, relatives of those aboard rushed to the airport, some overcome with grief and anger over the lack of information. “Pray for them,” said a relative of a flight attendant who had just married. “We don’t know anything.”
Earlier in the day, Egypt’s civil aviation minister, Sherif Fathi, acknowledged at a news conference that the cause might have been terrorism. Mr. Fathi said that “if you analyze the situation properly,” the possibility of “having a terror attack is higher than the possibility” of technical failure.
EgyptAir said the pilot and co-pilot had nearly 9,000 hours of flying time between them. Officials from the Interior Ministry and Cairo Airport described them as experienced fliers with no known political affiliations.
The mystery of the plane’s demise also raised broader questions about the vulnerability of civilian air travel to terrorism. Flight 804 went missing against the backdrop of threats from militant extremist groups like the Islamic State and Al Qaeda, with networks linking Europe to the Middle East.
By Thursday evening, no group had claimed responsibility.
With differing reports about precisely what wreckage had been discovered, President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi of Egypt ordered the armed forces to “take all measures necessary” to find the remains of the plane, his office said in a statement.
The statement also said work had begun immediately “to unravel the circumstances surrounding the disappearance of the Egyptian aircraft and establish its causes.”
Continue reading the main story
RELATED COVERAGE
EgyptAir Crash Blindsides a Nation That Thought It Was Recovering MAY 19, 2016
Despair, Anger and Scant Hope for Relatives of EgyptAir Passengers MAY 19, 2016
As news of the missing plane spread in Cairo, relatives of those aboard rushed to the airport, some overcome with grief and anger over the lack of information. “Pray for them,” said a relative of a flight attendant who had just married. “We don’t know anything.”
Earlier in the day, Egypt’s civil aviation minister, Sherif Fathi, acknowledged at a news conference that the cause might have been terrorism. Mr. Fathi said that “if you analyze the situation properly,” the possibility of “having a terror attack is higher than the possibility” of technical failure.
EgyptAir said the pilot and co-pilot had nearly 9,000 hours of flying time between them. Officials from the Interior Ministry and Cairo Airport described them as experienced fliers with no known political affiliations.
Officials in Egypt, who have been under intense scrutiny since a bomb brought down a Russian airliner over the Sinai Peninsula in October, killing all 224 people on board, declined to describe the events as a crash.
The aviation minister’s quick acknowledgment that terrorism might be a cause this time was in stark contrast to the government’s handling of the loss of the Russian airliner, which Egyptian officials had insisted for months could not have been the result of terrorism.
The French president, François Hollande, after speaking by telephone with President Sisi of Egypt, also raised the possibility of terrorism. “The information that we have been able to gather — the prime minister, the members of the government, and, of course, the Egyptian authorities — unfortunately confirm for us that this plane crashed at sea and has been lost,” Mr. Hollande said at the Élysée Palace.
Mr. Hollande said that “no hypothesis was being ruled out,” and that search teams from France, Greece and Egypt were hoping to recover “debris that would enable us to know the truth.”
He added, “When we have the truth, we must draw all the conclusions, whether it is an accident or another hypothesis, which everybody has in mind: the terrorist hypothesis.”
Security at Charles de Gaulle Airport outside Paris, where Flight 804 departed, was tightened after the terrorist attacks in and around the French capital in November, and scrutiny of passengers and luggage was also stepped up in the wake of the bombing of Brussels Airport in March.
