Egyptian Army Official Says EgyptAir Flight 804 Plane Debris Found

An Egyptian military spokesman says the country’s military has found debris from EgyptAir flight 804, which crashed in the Mediterranean Sea Thursday after disappearing from radar while carrying 66 passengers and crew from Paris to Cairo.

UPDATE: The pilot and co-pilot of EgyptAir flight 804 have been identified as Captain Mohamed Said Shoukair, 36, who had 6,226 hours flying hours under his belt. The co-pilot was Mohamed Mamdouh Assem, 24, who had 2,766 flying hours. Both had no political affiliations and passed periodical background check security reviews.

EgyptAir flight 804 from Paris to Cairo crashed with 66 passengers and crew on board in the Mediterranean Sea off the Greek island of Crete early Thursday morning. Greek Defense Minister Panos Kammenos said EgyptAir flight 804 made abrupt turns and suddenly lost altitude just before vanishing from radar at around 2.45 a.m. Egyptian time.

“It turned 90 degrees left and then a 360 degree turn toward the right, dropping from 38,000 to 15,000 feet and then it was lost at about 10,000 feet,” Kammenos said, adding the aircraft was 10-15 miles inside the Egyptian FIR and at an altitude of 37,000 feet.

Eypt’s Civil Aviation Minister Sherif Fathi said at a news conference in Cairo that EgyptAir flight 804 was a terror attack is more likely than not the cause of the crash.

“On the contrary. If you thoroughly analyze the situation, the possibility of having a different action or a terror attack, is higher than the possibility of having a technical failure,” Mr. Fathi said.

EgyptAir said the Airbus A320 vanished 10 miles (16 kilometers) after it entered Egyptian airspace, around 280 kilometers (175 miles) off Egypt’s coastline north of the Mediterranean port city of Alexandria. It was carrying 56 passengers, including one child and two babies, three security staff and seven crew members, officials said. Minister Fathy said identities would not be released until relatives could be contacted, but described those those on board as including 15 French passengers, 30 Egyptians, one Briton, two Iraqis, one Kuwaiti, one Saudi, one Sudanese, one Chadian, one Portuguese, one Algerian and one Canadian.

Officials from France, Greece and Egypt said boats and ships from several multiple countries were scouring the waters off of the Greek island of Karpathos, a location near where a witness reported seeing a fireball in the sky. By midday on Thursday, an Egyptian plane spotted two orange items–one of which was oblong–a Greek military official believed to be from the missing plane.

The U.S. Navy on Thursday said a Lockheed-made P-3 Orion long-range aircraft was supporting the search for an EgyptAir plane that disappeared on a flight from Paris to Cairo over the Mediterranean. The P-3 Orion has the technological ability to detect magnetic material beneath the surface.