ALGIERS- An Air Algerie plane with around 120 people on board including
\nFrench and Spanish nationals went missing Thursday during a flight from
\nBurkina Faso to Algiers, company sources and officials said.
\nAviation sources told AFP the aircraft was a McDonnell Douglas MD-83
\nleased from Spanish company Swiftair carrying passengers of different
\nnationalities.
\nIts six-member crew were all Spanish, said Spain\u2019s airline pilots\u2019 union
\nSepla, while Swiftair confirmed the aircraft had gone missing less than an
\nhour after takeoff from Ouagadougou.
\nMany French nationals were thought to be on board the plane, France\u2019s
\nTransport Minister Frederic Cuvillier said in Paris.
\nHe said after a government meeting that top civil aviation officials were
\nholding an emergency meeting and a crisis cell had been set up.
\nEarlier reports had said the plane was a DC-9.
\n\u201cThe plane disappeared at Gao (in Mali), 500 kilometres (300 miles) from
\nthe Algerian border. Several nationalities are among the victims,\u201d Prime
\nMinister Abdelmalek Sellal was cited as saying by Algerian radio.
\nThe Air Algerie source earlier said contact was lost while the airliner
\nwas still in Malian airspace and approaching the border with Algeria.
\nDespite international military intervention still under way, the situation
\nremains unstable in northern Mali, which was seized by jihadist groups for
\nseveral months in 2012.
\nOn July 17, the Bamako government and armed groups from northern Mali
\nlaunched tough talks in Algiers aimed at securing an elusive peace deal,
\nand with parts of the country still mired in conflict.
\n– \u2018Contact lost\u2019 –
\n\u201cThe plane was not far from the Algerian frontier when the crew was asked
\nto make a detour because of poor visibility and to prevent the risk of
\ncollision with another aircraft on the Algiers-Bamako route,\u201d the airline
\nsource said.
\n\u201cContact was lost after the change of course.\u201d
\nThe carrier, in a statement carried by national news agency APS, said it
\ninitiated an \u201cemergency plan\u201d in the search for flight AH5017, which flies
\nthe four-hour passenger route four times a week.
\nOne of Algeria\u2019s worst air disasters occurred in February this year, when
\na C-130 military aircraft carrying 78 people crashed in poor weather in
\nthe mountainous northeast, killing more than 70 people.
\nThe plane was flying from the desert garrison town of Tamanrasset in
\nAlgeria\u2019s deep south to Constantine, 320 kilometres (200 miles) east of
\nAlgiers.
\nTamanrasset was the site of the country\u2019s worst ever civilian air
\ndisaster, in March 2003.
\nIn that accident, all but one of 103 people on board were killed when an
\nAir Algerie passenger plane crashed on takeoff after one of its engines
\ncaught fire.
\nThe sole survivor, a young Algerian soldier, was critically injured.
\nIn December 2012, two Algerian military jets on a routine training mission
\ncollided in mid-air near Tlemcen in the northwest, killing both pilots.
\nA month earlier, a twin-turboprop CASA C-295 military transport aircraft,
\nwhich was carrying a cargo of paper for the printing of banknotes in
\nAlgeria, crashed in southern France.
\nThe five soldiers and one central bank representative on board were all
\nkilled.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
ALGIERS- An Air Algerie plane with around 120 people on board including French and Spanish nationals went missing Thursday during a flight from Burkina Faso to Algiers, company sources and…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":29426,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_lmt_disableupdate":"","_lmt_disable":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[17],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-29402","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-exclusive"],"yoast_head":"\n