{"id":215488,"date":"2016-05-19T11:56:58","date_gmt":"2016-05-19T11:56:58","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/citifmonline.com\/?p=215488"},"modified":"2016-05-19T11:56:58","modified_gmt":"2016-05-19T11:56:58","slug":"egyptair-flight-from-paris-to-cairo-crashed-hollande","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/?p=215488","title":{"rendered":"EgyptAir flight from Paris to Cairo crashed &#8211; Hollande"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"story-body__introduction\">An EgyptAir flight reported missing between Paris and Cairo has crashed, French President Francois Hollande confirmed.<\/p>\n<p>The Airbus A320 with 66 people on board disappeared from radar at 02:30 Cairo time (00:30 GMT), soon after leaving Greek airspace.<\/p>\n<p>Greece&#8217;s defence minister says Flight MS804 made &#8220;sharp turns&#8221; and plunged before dropping off the radar.<\/p>\n<p>A major search is under way in seas south of the Greek island of Karpathos.<\/p>\n<p>Greek and Egyptian armed forces are involved in the effort, and France has offered to send boats and planes.<\/p>\n<p>Mr Hollande said he was keeping an open mind about the cause of the crash.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;We will draw conclusions when we have the truth about what happened,&#8221; he said.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Whether it was an accident, or whether it was &#8211; and it&#8217;s something that is on our minds &#8211; terrorism.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>There were 56 passengers &#8211; including three children &#8211; seven crew members and three security personnel on board. They included 30 Egyptians, 15 French citizens and a Briton.<\/p>\n<figure class=\"media-portrait no-caption full-width\"><span class=\"image-and-copyright-container\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"responsive-image__img js-image-replace aligncenter\" src=\"http:\/\/ichef-1.bbci.co.uk\/news\/624\/cpsprodpb\/13B2B\/production\/_89738608_egyptair_previousflights_map624_v2.png\" alt=\"Map showing where the missing plane had been in the previous 24 hours\" width=\"624\" height=\"653\" data-highest-encountered-width=\"624\" \/><\/span><\/figure>\n<p>Flight MS804 left Charles de Gaulle airport in Paris at 23:09 local time on Wednesday (21:09 GMT) and was scheduled to arrive in the Egyptian capital soon after 03:15 local time on Thursday.<\/p>\n<p>EgyptAir said the plane had been flying at 11,300m (37,000ft) when it disappeared from radar shortly after entering Egyptian airspace.<\/p>\n<p>Aviation officials in Greece said earlier that air traffic controllers had spoken to the pilot a few minutes earlier and everything had appeared normal.<\/p>\n<p>But Greece&#8217;s Defence Minister Panos Kammenos told a news conference that soon after entering Egyptian airspace, the plane had turned &#8220;90 degrees left and 360 degrees to the right&#8221; before plunging.<\/p>\n<figure class=\"media-landscape has-caption full-width\"><span class=\"image-and-copyright-container\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"responsive-image__img js-image-replace aligncenter\" src=\"http:\/\/ichef.bbci.co.uk\/news\/624\/cpsprodpb\/C5FB\/production\/_89738605_720ae4c3-8d1d-4655-9351-3eef8c510672.jpg\" alt=\"Relatives and friends at Cairo airport on 19 May 2016\" width=\"601\" height=\"338\" data-highest-encountered-width=\"624\" \/>The relatives and friends of those on board the plane have been gathering at Cairo airport&#8230;<\/span><\/figure>\n<figure class=\"media-landscape has-caption full-width\"><span class=\"image-and-copyright-container\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"responsive-image__img js-image-replace aligncenter\" src=\"http:\/\/ichef-1.bbci.co.uk\/news\/624\/cpsprodpb\/1141B\/production\/_89738607_0c9fc5e3-527f-4111-981c-f7234a435bb5.jpg\" alt=\"Relatives and friends at Paris' Charles de Gaulle on 19 May 2016\" width=\"599\" height=\"337\" data-highest-encountered-width=\"624\" \/><\/span><\/figure>\n<p>There was some earlier confusion over whether a distress signal had been sent by the plane.<\/p>\n<p>Egypt&#8217;s state-run newspaper al-Ahram quoted an EgyptAir statement as saying the Egyptian army&#8217;s rescue and search had received a distress call from the plane at 04:26 local time &#8211; which would be around two hours after the flight disappeared.<\/p>\n<p>But Egypt&#8217;s military subsequently said that no such signal had been received.<\/p>\n<p>&#8211;<\/p>\n<p>Source: BBC<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>An EgyptAir flight reported missing between Paris and Cairo has crashed, French President Francois Hollande confirmed. The Airbus A320 with 66 people on board disappeared from radar at 02:30 Cairo time (00:30 GMT), soon after leaving Greek airspace. Greece&#8217;s defence minister says Flight MS804 made &#8220;sharp turns&#8221; and plunged before dropping off the radar. A [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":14,"featured_media":215491,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"jnews_override_counter":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[107],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-215488","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-international"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/215488","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/14"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=215488"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/215488\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/215491"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=215488"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=215488"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=215488"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}