Air Algeria Jet With 116 People Vanishes

[mystery-ak]

http://www.newsmax.com/PrintTemplate.aspx/?nodeid=584597


Newsmax
Air Algeria Jet With 116 People Vanishes
Thursday, July 24, 2014 08:18 AM

By: Andrea Rothman

An Air Algeria-operated MD83 carrying 116 passengers and crew disappeared en route from Burkina Faso in Africa to Algiers, the aircraft’s owner said.

The plane, which took off in the west African country shortly after midnight, was supposed to land at 05:10 a.m. local time, Swiftair, a charter company based in Spain, said in a statement today. The plane carried 110 passengers and six crew.

“There has been no contact with the plane until now,” Swiftair said. “Emergency teams and the company’s personnel are working to figure out what happened and will notify people as further information is available.”

A loss of the aircraft would mark the third major accident in a week around the world for commercial airliners. A Malaysian Air Boeing Co. 777 went down over eastern Ukraine on July 17 following a suspected missile strike, killing all 298 people on board, while an ATR-72 turbo-prop crash yesterday on the Penghu Islands in Taiwan left 48 people dead.

MD83 planes, introduced in 1980, belong to a family of twin-engine, short- to medium-range, single-aisle commercial airliners. They were built by McDonnell Douglas Corp., acquired by Boeing Co. in 1997. Boeing had no immediate comment.

Swiftair has more than 400 employees and has a fleet of more than 30 planes, which include models such as the Boeing 727 and 737, MD83, ATR72/42, Embraer 120 and Metroliner, according to its website.

[mystery-ak]

http://news.yahoo.com/air-algerie-ah5017-plane-disappears-115228417.html

Air Algerie flight AH5017 crashes: Official
Dylan Stableford, Yahoo News By Dylan Stableford, Yahoo News
3 minutes ago
Yahoo News

Air Algerie flight AH5017, en route from Burkina Faso to Algiers and carrying 110 people, has crashed, an Algerian aviation official told Reuters.

"I can confirm that it has crashed," the official said, declining to give details of where the plane was or what caused the accident.

Here is what we know so far:

• Swiftair, the Spanish airline operated by Air Algerie, said it lost contact with MD83 aircraft — with 110 passengers and six crew members — about 50 minutes after takeoff from Ougadougou, the capital of the west African nation.

• Agence France-Press reports that the plane was "not far from the Algerian frontier when the crew was asked to make a detour because of poor visibility and to prevent the risk of collision with another aircraft on the Algiers-Bamako route."

• Weather officials said northern Mali was hit with a powerful sandstorm overnight.

• An airline source told AFP that contact with the aircraft was lost while it was over Mali, considered a "high risk" flight zone for U.S. airlines. But a senior French official told Associated Press that it is unlikely shoulder-fired weapons used by fighters in northern Mali could shoot down an aircraft at cruising altitude.

• Issa Saly Maiga, head of Mali's National Civil Aviation Agency, said that a search was under way for the missing flight. "We do not know if the plane is Malian territory," Maiga told Reuters. "Aviation authorities are mobilized in all the countries concerned: Burkina Faso, Mali, Niger, Algeria and even Spain."

• There are reports that the plane crashed in Niger.

[Oceander]

Maybe the Ukrainians shot this one down as well?  /sarc