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EgyptAir flight MS804 crash – as it happened

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Jean-Marc Ayrault, the Frence foreign minister, was this morning still refusing to draw conclusions about the cause of the crash, despite the Egyptian authorities already saying it was likely to have been a terrorist attack.

“We’re looking at all possibilities, but none is being favoured over the others because we have absolutely no indication on the causes (of the crash),” Jean-Marc Ayrault told French television, according to AFP.

The French government will meet families of the victims on Saturday in order to “provide all the information we can,” Ayrault said.

French foreign minister Jean-Marc Ayrault at the NATO headquarters in Brussels yesterday. He said this morning that there is as yet “no indication of the causes” of the crash of flight MS804 Photograph: John Thys/AFP/Getty Images

What we know so far

Claire Phipps
Claire Phipps

Here is a summary of what we now know about EgyptAir flight MS804, which disappeared from radar at 2.30am local time (04.30 GMT) on Thursday morning.

So far no confirmed wreckage of the missing plane has been found.

  • EgyptAir has rowed back on an earlier announcement that wreckage belonging to MS804 had been spotted in the Mediterranean, close to the Greek island of Karpathos. “We stand corrected,” the airline’s vice-president Ahmed Adel said. The debris “is not our aircraft”.
  • The Egyptian navy, air force and army are currently searching the sea to the north of Egypt’s coast, with French, Greek, British and US support.
  • Egypt’s aviation minister Sherif Fathy said terrorism was more likely than technical failure to be the cause of the crash.
  • No group has claimed responsibility for downing the aircraft.
  • The plane made “sudden swerves” before dropping off radar over the Mediterranean, reportedly making a 90-degree turn left, and dropping from 37,000 feet to 15,000 feet before swerving 360 degrees right.
  • The plane was carrying 56 passengers and 10 crew: two cockpit crew, five cabin crew and three security personnel. The airline said two babies and one child were 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.
  • EgyptAir says the captain – named as

    Mohamed Said Shoukair –

    has 6,275 flying hours, including 2,101 on the A320; the copilot,

    Mohamed Mamdouh Ahmed

    , has 2,766. The plane was manufactured in 2003.


We now know a bit more about some of the crew members on board flight MS804.

The captain has been named as Mohamed Said Shoukair. EgyptAir said he was an experienced pilot, having clocked up 6,275 flying hours, including 2,101 on the A320.

His co-pilot and first officer has been named as Mohamed Mamdouh Ahmed Assem. He had 2,766 flying hours.

CNN reports both lived in Cairo.

The head flight attendant has been named as Mirvat Zaharia Zaki Mohamed.

Assem’s personal Facebook page has become a commemorative page, with tributes from friends and relatives.

Facebook added "Remembering" on the profile of #MS804 #EgyptAir pilot. pic.twitter.com/hw5js0Y41W

— The Big Pharaoh (@TheBigPharaoh) May 20, 2016

Search continues for plane wreckage

A huge hunt is underway in the Mediterranean for debris from the EgyptAir jet that swerved abruptly and disappeared from radar while carrying 66 people from Paris to Cairo.

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

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

Egypt was leading international efforts to find any wreckage of the plane, 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.”

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.

What we know so far

Claire Phipps
Claire Phipps

As dawn approaches in Egypt, with first light set to assist the search and rescue operation, here is a summary of what we now know about missing EgyptAir flight MS804, which has been missing since 2.30am local time (04.30 GMT) Thursday morning.

  • EgyptAir has rowed back on an earlier announcement that wreckage belonging to MS804 had been spotted in the Mediterranean, close to the Greek island of Karpathos. “We stand corrected,” the airline’s vice-president Ahmed Adel said. The debris “is not our aircraft”.
  • The Egyptian navy, air force and army are searching the sea to the north of Egypt’s coast, with French, Greek, British and US support.
  • Egypt’s aviation minister Sherif Fathy said terrorism was more likely than technical failure to be the cause of the crash. “The possibility of having a terror attack is higher than the possibility of having a technical [problem],” he told reporters.
  • French president François Holland, Egyptian prime minister Sherif Ismail and the White House also said terrorism could not be ruled out.
  • No group has claimed responsibility for downing the aircraft.
  • The plane made “sudden swerves” before dropping off radar over the Mediterranean, Greek defence 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.
An Egyptian military search boat takes part in a search operation in the Mediterranean. Photograph: Reuters Tv/Reuters
  • The plane was carrying 56 passengers and 10 crew: two cockpit crew, five cabin crew and three security personnel. The airline said two babies and one child were on board. Among the passengers were30 Egyptians, 15 French, two Iraqis, and one person each from the UK, Belgium, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, Sudan, Chad, Portugal, Algeria and Canada.
  • The plane, on its fifth journey of the day, was traveling at 37,000 feet when it disappeared from radar. It had made a stop in Tunisia before flying to Paris.
  • EgyptAir says the captain – named as Mohamed Said Shoukair – has 6,275 flying hours, including 2,101 on the A320; the copilot, Mohamed Mamdouh Ahmed, has 2,766. The plane was manufactured in 2003.

Reuters has more on the confusion over the debris that was first claimed – then denied – to be part of the plane:

The Egyptian civil aviation ministry initially said Greek authorities had found “floating material” and life jackets likely to be from the plane, an Airbus A320.

However, late on Thursday EgyptAir vice-president Ahmed Adel told CNN that the wreckage had not 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 said.

Greek defence sources told Reuters the material was discovered in the sea 370km (230 miles) south of the island of Crete.

Tarek Wahba, the captain of the Maersk Ahram, a ship involved in the search and rescue operation for EgyptAir flight MS804, posted pictures showing an orange object floating in the sea. Photograph: Tarek Wahba via Facebook

Los Angeles international airport said it was stepping up security measures in the wake of the disappearance of the EgyptAir plane.

In a statement, the Los Angeles airport police said:

In light of the disappearance of EgyptAir flight MS804, we have heightened our security posture and enhanced our counter-terrorism security measures.

US Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump has been ramping up the rhetoric over the circumstances of the plane’s disappearance, telling supporters:

If anybody thinks it wasn’t blown out of the sky, you’re 100% wrong.

His Democrat rival Hillary Clinton said comments like Trump’s “make it more difficult” to get allies round the table to tackle terror, and doubted his qualifications as would-be president to take on the threat of terrorism.

This in turn prompted an angry response from the Trump campaign, which issued this statement:

Look at the carnage all over the world including the World Trade Center, San Bernardino, Paris, the USS Cole, Brussels and an unlimited number of other places.

She and our totally ignorant President won’t even use the term Radical Islamic Terrorism. And by the way, ask Hillary who blew up the plane last night – another terrible, but preventable tragedy.

More on our US election live blog:

Australian national was on plane

Here is the full statement from Julie Bishop, Australia’s foreign minister:

I regretfully confirm that one of the passengers on Egypt Air flight MS804, en route from Paris to Cairo was an Australian-UK dual national.

We are working closely with UK authorities, which are taking the lead in the provision of consular assistance to the man’s family.

The government is working with our partners and allies to understand the reasons behind the flight’s disappearance and presumed crash. It is too early to speculate on the cause of this incident.

My thoughts are with the families and friends of those affected.

Out of respect for the man’s family, the government will not provide more details at this stage.

The Australian government has said that one of the passengers on board the missing plane was an Australian-UK dual national.

It is unclear at this point if this is Richard Osman, so far identified as the only Briton on the flight.

Claire Phipps
Claire Phipps

Hello, this is Claire Phipps picking up the live blog again.

We have now learned the names of some of the crew aboard MS804.

The captain has been named as Mohamed Said Shoukair.

Mohamed Mamdouh Ahmed was the first officer, and Mirvat Zaharia Zaki Mohamed was the head flight attendant.

Summary

Here’s what we know so far about EgyptAir flight MS804, which went missing en route from Paris to Cairo at 2.30am local time Thursday morning.

  • EgyptAir retracted its claim to have found wreckage belonging to MS804, falling in line with Greek authorities who said that floating debris did not belong to the plane. “We stand corrected,” Airline vice-president Ahmed Adel told CNN, adding that the recovered debris “is not our aircraft”.
  • President Abdel Fatah al-Sisi ordered the navy, air force and army to join with Egyptian, French, Greek and US forces searching the Mediterranean for debris. The debris falsely attributed to MS804 was found near the island of Karpathos, east of Crete.
  • Egypt’s aviation minister Sherif Fathy said terrorism was more likely than technical failure to be the cause of the crash. “The possibility of having a terror attack is higher than the possibility of having a technical [problem],” he told reporters. French president François Holland, Egyptian prime minister Sherif Ismail and the White House said that terrorism could not be ruled out.
  • No group has claimed responsibility for downing the aircraft, and search teams still have no sign of the Airbus A320 or the 66 people who were on board.
  • The plane is presumed crashed in the Mediterranean, east of Greece and about 10 miles into Egyptian airspace. “Family members of passengers and crew have been already informed and we extend our deepest sympathies to those affected,” EgyptAir said in a statement.
  • 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.
Flights.
  • The plane was carrying 56 passengers and 10 crew: two cockpit crew, five cabin crew and three security personnel. The airline said two babies and one child were 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.
  • The plane, on its fifth journey of the day, was traveling at 37,000 feet when it disappeared from radar. It had made a stop in Tunisia before flying to Paris.
  • EgyptAir says the captain has 6,275 flying hours, including 2,101 on the A320; the copilot has 2,766. The plane was manufactured in 2003.
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Though officials have said terrorism is the most likely cause of MS804’s disappearance and assumed crash, a US intelligence review have of satellite imagery has so far not shown evidence of an explosion, Reuters reports.

Reuters cites officials from several US agencies.

The officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss intelligence matters, said the conclusion was the result of a preliminary examination of imagery and cautioned against media reports suggesting the United States believed a bomb was responsible for the crash.

The United States has not ruled out any possible causes for the crash, including mechanical failure, terrorism or a deliberate act by the pilot or crew, they said.

National security adviser Ben Rhodes has meanwhile told reporters that the White House is not making any claims about what happened to the missing plane.

"Our Government has not reached a formal determination about what took place," says @rhodes44 about the EgyptAir crash.

— Mark Knoller (@markknoller) May 19, 2016

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