Search and rescue operations are ongoing after an EgyptAir jetliner disappeared from radar and plunged into the Mediterranean sea while carrying 66 people from Paris to Cairo early Thursday morning. The plane was in Egyptian airspace at the time, and the country’s officials have indicated that terrorism may have been the cause for the disaster.
Thursday afternoon reports that wreckage from the missing flight 804 was found some 150 nautical miles north of the Egyptian coast turned out to be false. American officials said that their initial theory is that the plane was downed by a bomb, though one senior Obama administration official warned that there was no “smoking gun” to prove that yet.
Egyptian Civil Aviation Minister Sherif Fathy said that the “possibility of a terror attack is higher than that of a technical error,” according to the state-run Ahram Online news site. When pressed, Fathy said that his judgment was based on his “expertise,” but allowed that until the debris is found he won’t know for sure.
“It’s very difficult to come up with a scenario that jibes with some sort of catastrophic failure. (The evidence so far) leads us down the road to a deliberate act,” said CNN aviation analyst Miles O’Brien.
The New York Times reported that the plane made its final verbal contact with Greek air traffic controllers at 2:26 AM, as it was leaving Greek airspace. The last radar contact made with the plane was a few minutes later.
Greek Defense Minister Panos Kammenos said that at 2:37 AM, the plane made a 360 degree turn before dropping to 15,000 feet from 37,000 as it entered Egyptian airspace and disappearing from radar. No negative weather conditions were reported.
France has tightened its security in the wake of the terror attacks that the Islamic State carried out in Paris last November, which killed 130 people. The Telegraph reported that French investigators are reviewing closed circuit television footage to determine who had access to the plane and its luggage before it took off.
ISIS took responsibility for the crash of a Russian MetroJet flight over the Sinai Peninsula last November, which killed all 224 passengers on board. The group claimed that it hid the explosive device in a soda can.
[Photo: Kurush Pawar / Flickr ]