Hollande confirms Paris-Cairo flight ‘crashed’

French President Francois Hollande confirmed Thursday that the EgyptAir flight that disappeared from radar screens over the Mediterranean had “crashed.”

“We must ensure that we know everything on the causes of what happened. No hypothesis is ruled out or favored,” he said in a televised address.

“Whether it was an accident or another hypothesis that everyone has on their mind — a terrorist hypothesis… at this stage we must focus on our solidarity with the families and the search for the causes of the catastrophe,” Hollande added.

The Paris prosecutor’s office said its accident department had opened an investigation into the crash.

The EgyptAir flight from Paris to Cairo crashed into the Mediterranean between the Greek islands and the Egyptian coast early Thursday with 66 people on board.

“We feel solidarity and compassion. It’s not the first such catastrophe, and we know what it means for families and loved ones,” Hollande said.

A Greek civil aviation said the pilot of the EgyptAir666 had “not mentioned a problem” in his final contact.

“The flight controllers contacted the pilot (with the plane) at a height of 37,000 feet (near Athens)… he did not mention a problem,” civil aviation chief Constantinos Litzerakos told Antenna TV.

Litzerakos said the controllers had last spoken to the pilot “around 0005 GMT,” some 25 minutes before the plane disappeared from Greek radar.

A civil aviation statement said the pilot “was in a good mood and gave thanks in Greek when authorized to exit the Athens flight information region.

“We tracked the entire process from the plane’s entry (into Greek airspace) to its exit, it does not appear to deviate at all from the coordinates we gave,” Litzerakos said.

Greek defense minister Panos Kammenos said the EgyptAir flight made abrupt turns and suddenly lost altitude just before vanishing from radar at around 2:45 a.m. Egyptian time.

Kammenos said the aircraft was 10-15 miles inside the Egyptian FIR and at an altitude of 37,000 feet. “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,” he said.

The Greek defense ministry said it had dispatched two search planes and a frigate to international waters in the area, with additional resources on standby on Karpathos and nearby Crete.

Twenty-six foreigners were among the 56 passengers, including 15 French citizens, a Briton and a Canadian, EgyptAir said.

EgyptAir said contact was lost with the flight about 280 kilometers (175 miles) north of the Egyptian coast.

Neither the Greek coastguard nor the navy could confirm reports that a passing ship had seen “a ball of fire in the sky.”

The civil aviation chief said if there had been an explosion, any debris would have scattered across a wide distance.

“It was at a height of 37,000 feet, dispersal is quite logical. This is quite an altitude,” he told Antenna. ministry said it had dispatched two search planes and a frigate to international waters in the area, with additional resources on standby on Karpathos and nearby Crete.

Twenty-six foreigners were among the 56 passengers, including 15 French citizens, a Briton and a Canadian, EgyptAir said.

EgyptAir said contact was lost with the flight about 280 kilometers (175 miles) north of the Egyptian coast.

Neither the Greek coastguard nor the navy could confirm reports that a passing ship had seen “a ball of fire in the sky.”

The civil aviation chief said if there had been an explosion, any debris would have scattered across a wide distance.

“It was at a height of 37,000 feet, dispersal is quite logical. This is quite an altitude,” he told Antenna.