EgyptAir withdraws claims that wreckage has been found as official admits it ‘is not our aircraft’

This article is more than 4 years old

This article is more than 4 years old

Multiple navies are searching the Mediterranean for debris from an EgyptAir jet carrying 66 people from Paris to Cairo that swerved abruptly and fell out of the sky into the sea.

EgyptAir initially claimed it had found part of the wreckage and life jackets belonging to MS804 near the island of Karpathos, east of Crete, but airline vice-president Ahmed Adel later said “we stand corrected”.

He added the recovered debris “is not our aircraft”.

Egypt was leading international efforts, backed by France, Greece and Turkey. The US navy dispatched a P-3 Orion maritime surveillance aircraft from a base in Sicily.

Egypt’s aviation minister, Sherif Fathi, said he did not want to prematurely draw conclusions, but added: “The possibility of having a different action or a terror attack, is higher than the possibility of having a technical failure.”

France said no theory could yet be ruled out. “The information we have gathered confirms, alas, that this plane has crashed, and it has disappeared,” President François Hollande said. “We have a duty to know everything about the cause and what has happened.”

The aircraft was carrying 56 passengers and 10 crew, including three security personnel. The airline said two babies and one child were also on board.

Among the passengers were 30 Egyptians, 15 French, two Iraqis, and one person each from the UK, Belgium, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, Sudan, Chad, Portugal, Algeria and Canada.

Julie Bishop, Australia’s foreign minister, said on Friday that the UK national was also an Australian citizen. “We are working closely with UK authorities, which are taking the lead in the provision of consular assistance to the man’s family,” she said.

The plane, manufactured in 2003, made “sudden swerves” before dropping off radar, Greek defense minister Panos Kammeno said. It made a 90-degree turn left, and then dropped from 37,000 feet to 15,000 feet before swerving 360 degrees right, he added.

Its captain, Mohamed Said Shoukair, had 6,275 flying hours experience. He did not send a distress signal.

No group has claimed responsibility for downing the aircraft.

EgyptAir flight MS804: 'We cannot exclude anything,' says Egypt PM – live updates Read more

As well as search efforts, Egyptian President Abdel Fatah al-Sisi ordered a committee formed by the civil aviation ministry to immediately start investigating the causes of the plane’s disappearance.



Security at the various airports that the missing plane had visited in the preceding 24 hours, including Paris’s Roissy-Charles de Gaulle, is likely to come under close scrutiny. As well as making repeated stops at Cairo International airport, the plane had also visited Asmara in Eritrea and Tunis in Tunisia.

David Gleave, an air accident investigator and aviation expert at Loughborough University, said that planting a bomb earlier in the itinerary was no more likely than in Paris: “EgyptAir had three security guards and there are thorough inspection procedures. Leaving a bomb onboard during five sectors [separate journeys] is possible but leaves a lot of issues about it exploding at the right point.

“Barometric timing [triggering through changing air pressure] doesn’t seem to be possible, and the longer you leave a bomb in a plane the more likely it is to be discovered,” he said.

Under the state of emergency imposed in France since the November terror attacks, the French capital’s major airport has seen security measures ramped up.

Los Angeles international airport said it was enhancing “counter-terrorism security measures” in the wake of the disappearance.

The Airbus A320 went down about 130 miles from Karpathos, Greek aviation sources indicated. C-130 aircraft and at least eight ships spent Thursday hunting for wreckage.

The plane took off from Charles de Gaulle airport at 11.09pm local time on Wednesday night, bound for Cairo. Contact was lost at about 2.30am Egypt local time.

Greek controllers had tried to make contact with the plane 10 miles before it exited their airspace. They received no response.



Greek authorities were investigating an account from the captain of a merchant ship who reported seeing a “flame in the sky” about 130 nautical miles south of Karpathos. The plane was about 10 miles inside Egyptian airspace when it vanished.



Officials from multiple US agencies told Reuters that satellite imagery so far had not produced any signs of an explosion. The anonymous sources said the conclusion was the result of a preliminary examination of imagery. They said the US had not ruled out any possible causes for the crash, including mechanical failure, terrorism or a deliberate act by the pilot or crew.

The disappearance follows serious concerns about security at Egypt’s airports. Some 224 people were killed on 31 October last year after a bomb was smuggled on to a Russian passenger jet. The plane, which took off from the resort of Sharm el-Sheikh, was brought down over the Sinai peninsula.

Britain warned Egyptian officials about lax security at the airport back in 2014. Egypt initially denied any terrorist link. The Kremlin later said an explosive device was responsible and a local branch of the extremist group Islamic State claimed responsibility within hours.

In recent years Egypt has faced a growing threat from Isis-affiliated groups, including Wilayat Sinai, based in the Sinai peninsula. It has claimed several bombings and shootings in the Nile valley against a backdrop of state repression.

An EgyptAir plane was hijacked and diverted to Cyprus in March. A man who admitted to the hijacking and is described by Cypriot authorities as “psychologically unstable” is in custody in Cyprus.

Q&A: key questions about missing EgyptAir flight MS804 Read more

Retrieving the plane’s black box is likely to be a long and fraught operation. The head of Greece’s air traffic control board, Serafeim Petrou, told the Guardian it was a “fact the plane had crashed”, adding: “Most probably, and very unfortunately, it is at the bottom of the sea.”

Petrou said tracing the cause and retrieving wreckage would therefore take time. “Nothing can be excluded. An explosion could be a possibility but, then, so could damage to the fuselage,” he said.

The airline said in a statement: “EgyptAir sincerely conveys its deepest sorrow to the families and friends of the passengers on board flight MS804. Family members of passengers and crew have been already informed and we extend our deepest sympathies to those affected.”

Relatives of some of the passengers gathered at Cairo International airport.

“There’s no information inside. They’re not telling us anything for sure,” said one young woman, who did not disclose her name. She said she had come to the arrival hall in the hope of hearing news of her friend Samar, one of the 30 Egyptian passengers on board the missing flight.

The UK foreign secretary, Philip Hammond, confirmed that a British passport holder was on board. The Briton was later named as Richard Osman, a 40-year-old geologist who had recently become a father for the second time.

Philip Hammond (@PHammondMP) Deeply concerned by missing #EgyptAir. Can confirm British passport holder was on board & FCO is supporting the missing passenger’s family.

Those aboard also included a Kuwaiti economics professor, Abdulmohsen al-Muteiri, Kuwait’s foreign ministry confirmed. A father of two, he was heading to Cairo for a three-day conference. Another was a young military student from Chad who was flying home to mourn his mother.



Additional reporting by Lara El Gibaly in Cairo

• This article was amended on 20 May 2016. An earlier version said that the military student from Chad was flying home to visit his mother.