Search For Missing EgyptAir Flight MS804 Under Way

• EgyptAir Flight 804 flying f-rom Paris to Cairo vanished f-rom radar with 66 people on board.
• The French president says the Airbus A320 crashed into the Mediterranean Sea.
• The cause of the crash is not yet known. 
• The passengers include 30 Egyptians, 15 French and 10 other nationalities.

An EgyptAir plane en route f-rom Paris to Cairo with 66 people on board is believed to have crashed into the Mediterranean Sea, officials said Thursday.

The French prosecutors office said it had launched an investigation after Flight MS804 disappeared f-rom radar early Thursday and French President Francois Hollande confirmed that the plane had crashed.

EgyptAir Flight 804 left Paris at 11:09 p.m. and was scheduled to land at 3:05 a.m., Cairo time. It was at 37,000 feet when it vanished f-rom radar around 2:45 a.m.Cairo time. The Airbus A320 had been flying for about 3 hours and 44 minutes, according to flight tracker Flightradar24. 

International authorities have launched an operation to find the missing flight. Greek and Egyptian search teams are focusing on a location near the Greek island of Karpathos, east of Crete.

“We must do everything to find crash debris,” Hollande said at a news conference.

The cause of the crash is unknown at this time. However, the pilot had more than 6,000 hours of flight experience, the airline said. The co-pilot had nearly 3,000 flying hours. No adverse weather was spotted at the time of the jet’s disappearance.

The plane went down 22,000 feet and took two sharp turns, the Greek defense minister said, according to the French newspaper Le Figaro. Egypt received no emergency signal f-rom the plane, according to Egypt’s Civil Aviation Minister Sherif Fathi.

Authorities have not ruled out terrorism as a potential cause of the crash. In a press conference, French President Hollande stated that no information is certain about the disappearance.

“When we have the truth we will draw our conclusions; whether this was an accident or something else, perhaps terrorist. We will have the truth,” Hollande said.

Egypt’s Civil Aviation Minister Fathi also said that a terror attack was a possibility at a press conference, although he stated that he was not happy with “people making assumptions.”

A spate of recent air disasters and incidents have caused alarm for security officials and the aviation industry. 

Last October, a Russian airliner carrying 224 passengers f-rom the Egyptian resort town of Sharm el Sheikh crashed killing all those aboard. The self-described Islamic State later took credit for the incident, claiming to have brought down the flight with an explosive.

In March, an EgyptAir flight with 81 people flying f-rom Alexandria, Egypt to Cairo was hijacked and forced to land in Cyprus by a man with fake suicide belt. No one was harmed. The man, who a Cyprus official said seemed unstable, was arrested. Authorities didn’t classify the incident as terrorism.

Paris increased security at its C-harles de Gaulle airport following the November terror attacks in the city. 

This is a developing story. Check back for up-dates.

To read more Egypt Air coverage in French, visit Le Huffington Post