Alwaght-An EgyptAir Paris-to-Cairo flight with 66 passengers and crew on board crashed in the Mediterranean Sea early Thursday with initial reports indicating terrorism probably caused the fatal crash.
Egypt's civil aviation minister Sherif Fathy said "all scenarios are possible" regarding the EgyptAir flight but told reporters that the “possibility of a terrorist act is higher than that of a technical error”.
Fathy explained that the Airbus 320 plane could carry 145 passengers, though only 66 were on board, “including 30 Egyptians, 15 French, two Iraqis, one Briton, one Canadian, one Sudanese, one Chadian, one Portuguese, one Algerian, one Belgian, one Kuwaiti and one Saudi... in addition to 10 crew members.”
The plane made “sudden swerves” before dropping off radar over the Mediterranean, Greek defense minister Panos Kammeno said. The plane made a 90-degree turn left, and then dropped from 37,000 feet to 15,000 feet before swerving 360 degrees right, he said. EgyptAir said contact was lost around 10 miles (16km) inside Egyptian airspace at 2.30am local time (00.30 GMT).
Meanwhile the EgyptAir Flight MS804 may have crashed as a result of a terrorist attack, director of Russian Federal Security Service (FSB) Alexander Bortnikov said on Thursday.
"Unfortunately, another incident with an aircraft of Egypt airlines took place today. It was most likely a terrorist attack that killed 66 people from 12 countries," Bortnikov said at the session of the Council of heads of security and special services of CIS member countries.
Bortnikov called on "all interested parties, including our partners in Europe, to take joint measures to identify persons involved in this terrible attack."
The EgyptAir flight is said to be staffed by two “experienced” pilots.
Some members of the media are drawing comparisons between today’s event and the Russian Metrojet crash in Sinai, Egypt in late 2015, where the Metrojet plane also disappeared from radar and also gave no distress call. It was later concluded that a bomb on board was very likely to have been the cause, although no conclusive proof has been offered as to who did it, and why.
If a terrorist attack onboard is confirmed, then there is possibility an explosive device might have been placed on board the Paris-Cairo flight at Charles de Gaulle airport. The doomed Egyptair plane had also been at Asmara, Tunis and Cairo airports during the 24 hours before landing in Paris.
Several scenarios could explain the mysterious disappearance of the Egyptair flight between Paris to Cairo, but experts say a terrorist attack is the most likely. Both France and Egypt have been leading targets for extremist terrorists in recent months.
