Plan B Forum

EgyptAir Flight 804 Disappears Over Mediterranean

CAIRO — An EgyptAir passenger jet that took off from Paris with 66 people on board suddenly disappeared over the Aeagen Sea on Thursday morning, shortly before it was due to land in Cairo.

As Egyptian and Greek authorities mounted a search-and-rescue operation focused around the island of Karpathos, President François Hollande of France confirmed that the plane had crashed and acknowledged that “the terrorist hypothesis” was one of several that investigators were looking at.

“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 Elysée Palace, after speaking by telephone with Egypt’s president, Abdel Fattah el-Sisi.

Mr. Hollande said that “no hypothesis was being ruled out,” and that the three countries were seeking 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.”

Aviation security in Egypt has been under intense scrutiny since a bomb brought down a Russian airliner over the Sinai Peninsula in October, killing all 224 people on board. And France has tightened airport security after a series of terrorist attacks last year.

EgyptAir Flight 804 departed Paris at 11:09 p.m. on Wednesday and disappeared at 2:45 a.m., shortly after it entered Egyptian airspace, EgyptAir said on Twitter. The plane had been traveling at an altitude of 37,000 feet and was carrying 56 passengers, including three children; seven crew members; and three members of airline security personnel.

Relatives of some of those on board are being flown from Paris Charles de Gaulle airport to Cairo

but it sounds like something in the cockpit. A pilot off the rails mentally, or crewmember, a terrorist passenger is possible but I would have to think less likely, or a device of some kind.

MajGenl.Meade wrote:This is a sad event for so many people. But what I don't get is that the plane is obviously gone and all aboard are lost. So why do relatives have to be flown from wherever they live to Cairo?

Relatives of some of those on board are being flown from Paris Charles de Gaulle airport to Cairo

Free holiday and hotel?

(Too cynical).

rubato wrote:

MajGenl.Meade wrote:This is a sad event for so many people. But what I don't get is that the plane is obviously gone and all aboard are lost. So why do relatives have to be flown from wherever they live to Cairo?

Relatives of some of those on board are being flown from Paris Charles de Gaulle airport to Cairo

Free holiday and hotel?

(Too cynical).

Most passengers were Egyptian. Some might have their families centered in Egypt. That might be true of the French passengers as well.


yrs,
rubato

MajGenl.Meade wrote: "...


So?

Cairo (CNN)The search for EgyptAir Flight 804 is continuing after reports that the plane's wreckage had been found turned out to be false hopes.

When searchers got close to debris found in the Mediterranean Sea they realized it didn't come from the missing airliner, EgyptAir's Vice Chairman Ahmed Adel told CNN.

The Airbus A320, which had 66 people on board, disappeared early Thursday as it flew from Paris to Cairo. Earlier Adel told CNN's Christiane Amanpour that the plane's wreckage had been found.
"We stand corrected on finding the wreckage because what we identified is not a part of our plane. So the search and rescue is still going on," Adel told CNN's "The Lead with Jake Tapper."

Adel said EgyptAir is not involved in the search and is getting its information from Greek authorities and the Egyptian military, but he didn't give details on why the debris found in the water was said to be from the plane or how that information was gathered.

The plane was carrying 56 passengers and 10 crew and security officers.
Earlier, a spokesman for Greece's Hellenic National Defense general staff had said an Egyptian search aircraft spotted two floating objects 210 nautical miles southeast of Crete. It's unclear whether those objects were part of the wreckage described by Adel.

MajGenl.Meade wrote:OK, I asked and you answered - with the usual vindictive sneers, of course.

As to myself, if the family (minus me) plane goes down in (oh, say...) the Pacific up Alaska way, I have no intention of zooming up to Anchorage just to hang around some hotel and fend off reporters. What's the point? They are all still just as dead whether I'm 800 miles from where the plane went down or 1800.

I wasn't concerned about cost to the airlines - just wondering why people seem to want to flock to some place as if it does any good. I suppose your thought about family matters in the old home-town explains a few cases.

MajGenl.Meade wrote: As to myself, if the family (minus me) plane goes down in (oh, say...) the Pacific up Alaska way, I have no intention of zooming up to Anchorage just to hang around some hotel and fend off reporters. What's the point? They are all still just as dead whether I'm 800 miles from where the plane went down or 1800.

I wasn't concerned about cost to the airlines - just wondering why people seem to want to flock to some place as if it does any good.

Your cynicism and lack of human understanding amounted to vindictive sneers far worse than anything I have ever done.


yrs,
rubato

A Welsh-born geologist was among the 66 people on board the crashed EgyptAir flight.

Passenger Richard Osman, 40, grew up in Carmarthen but is thought to have recently moved to Jersey.

Father-of-two Mr Osman is the eldest of four children of the late Dr Mohamed Fekry Ali Osman and wife Anne.

He has three siblings; Alistair, 35, Phillip, 34, and Anna, 32, who grew up in south Wales after their father moved there from his native Egypt to work as a consultant in ear, nose and throat surgery.

Mr Osman was a pupil at Queen Elizabeth Cambria School in Carmarthen and later studied geology and has a masters from Camborne School of Mines in Exeter.