Terrorism suspected in crash

Associated Press

CAIRO

An EgyptAir jetliner en route from Paris to Cairo with 66 people aboard veered wildly in flight and crashed in the Mediterranean Sea early Thursday, authorities said. Egyptian and Russian officials said it may have been brought down by terrorists.

There were no signs of survivors.

EgyptAir Flight 804, an Airbus A320 with 56 passengers and 10 crew members, went down about halfway between the Greek island of Crete and Egypt’s coastline, or around 175 miles offshore, after takeoff from Charles de Gaulle Airport, authorities said.

Greek Defense Minister Panos Kammenos said the plane spun all the way around and suddenly lost altitude just before vanishing from radar screens around 2:45 a.m. Cairo time (12:45 a.m. GMT).

He said it made a 90-degree left turn, then a full 360-degree turn to the right, plummeting from 38,000 feet to 15,000 feet. It disappeared at about 10,000 feet, he said. There were no reports of stormy weather at the time.

Egyptian and Greek authorities in ships and planes searched the suspected crash area throughout the day for traces of the airliner or its victims, with more help on the way from the U.S., Britain and France.

But as night fell, they had yet to find any confirmed debris, at one point dismissing a reported sighting of life vests and other floating material.

Civil Aviation Minister Sherif Fathi cautioned that the disaster still was under investigation but said the possibility it was a terror attack “is higher than the possibility of having a technical failure.”

Alexander Bortnikov, chief of Russia’s top domestic-security agency, went further, saying: “In all likelihood, it was a terror attack.”

There was no immediate claim from militants that they had downed the plane.

If it was terrorism, it would be the second deadly attack involving Egypt’s aviation industry in seven months.

Last October, a Russian passenger plane that took off from an Egyptian Red Sea resort crashed in the Sinai, killing all 224 people aboard. Russia said it was brought down by a bomb, and a local branch of the Islamic State claimed responsibility.

Thursday’s disaster also raises questions about security at De Gaulle Airport at a time when Western Europe has been on high alert over the deadly Islamic extremist attacks in Paris and at the Brussels airport and subway over the past six months.

French Foreign Minister Jean-Marc Ayrault said that airport security had been tightened considerably before the disaster, in part because of the coming European soccer championship, which France is hosting.

The Egyptian military said it did not receive a distress call from the doomed plane, and Egypt’s state-run daily Al-Ahram quoted an unidentified airport official as saying the pilot did not send one. That could mean that whatever sent the aircraft plummeting into the sea was sudden.

Its erratic course suggested a number of possible explanations, including a catastrophic mechanical or structural failure, a bombing, or a struggle over the controls with a hijacker in the cockpit.

Egyptian security officials said they were running background checks on the passengers to see if any had links to extremists.

In the U.S., Procter & Gamble Co. said one of its employees was aboard the EgyptAir plane.

The consumer-products maker identified him as Ahmed Helal, manager of its plant in Amiens, France. He had held a variety of managerial positions since joining P&G in his native Egypt in 2000.

His LinkedIn profile says he earned a mechanical engineering degree from The American University in Cairo in 1999. Other personal information wasn’t available immediately.

P&G spokesman Damon Jones says in a statement: “We are in touch with the employee’s family and are offering them our full support during this difficult time. Our thoughts and prayers are with them, and all the affected families.”

The FBI offered its assistance in the investigation. FBI Director James Comey said the bureau has no evidence yet that the plane was brought down intentionally.