CAIRO — An Egyptian jetliner carrying 66 people from Paris to Cairo
abruptly swerved, vanished from radar and plunged into the
Mediterranean early Thursday, shortly before it was scheduled to land.
Egyptian officials said wreckage had been found and suggested terrorism
was a more likely cause than technical failure
.
The
loss of the flight, EgyptAir 804, was the second civilian aviation
disaster for Egypt in the past year. It immediately resurrected fears
and speculation about the safety and security of Egyptian air travel and
broader questions about terrorism against civilian air travel.
Egypt
and Greece mounted an intense search-and-rescue operation in the
southern Aegean Sea, and, on Thursday afternoon, the Greek authorities
said debris believed to be from the wreckage had been found at a site
around 205 nautical miles southeast of Crete and 190 nautical miles
south of the Greek island of Karpathos. EgyptAir confirmed the discovery
of wreckage a few hours later in a Twitter posting.
The
Egyptian civil aviation minister, Sherif Fathi, told a news conference
in Cairo that it was premature to draw conclusions about the cause of
the crash, but he quickly acknowledged that it might be terrorism.
“I
don’t want to go to speculations and I don’t want to go to
assumptions,” Mr. Fathi said. Still, he said, “if you analyze the
situation properly,” the possibility of “having a terror attack is
higher than the possibility” of technical failure.
The jetliner, an Airbus A320, departed Paris at 11:09 p.m.
on Wednesday. The pilot spoke to Greek air traffic controllers at 2:26
a.m. and nothing seemed out of the ordinary, officials said. Three or
four minutes later, the plane made its last normal radar contact.
Watch the video as analyzed by the body responsible wreckage investigation
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