Egyptian Ministry of Foreign Affairs confirms wreckage of EgyptAir Flight MS804 found near Karpathos Island

EgyptAir said on Friday that the Egyptian Ministry of Foreign Affairs has confirmed the debris of FlightMS840 has been found. The wreckage of the ill-fated Airbus A32 was discovered near Karpathos Island in Greece.

The air carrier says it has informed family members of passengers and crew of the discovery of the wreckage. The Egyptian probe team is cooperating with their Greek counterpart in searching for the other remains of the plane

The New York Daily News earlier reported that Greek crews spotted two orange vessels floating 50 miles where the jet vanished from the radar. Egyptian Aviation Minister Sherif Fathy, lead investigator of the air mishap, believes it was a terror attack and not mechanical failure.

“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,” the minister says.

But US reconnaissance satellites did not detect evidence of a large flash of explosion aboard the jet, according to US official unauthorised to speak on intelligence matters, reports LA Times.

The plane had 66 people on board. According to Ihab Raslan, Civil Aviation spokesman, the jet disappeared about 10 miles after it entered Egypt’s airspace. The jet, which carried 56 passengers and 10 flight crew – made up of seven cabin crew and three security personnel - left the Charles de Gaulle Airport in Paris at 11:09 pm for Cairo. It was scheduled to arrive at the Egyptian capital on early Thursday morning. The plane manifest said it had 30 Egyptian, 15 French, two Iraqi, and one each British, Belgian, Kuwaiti and Saudi passengers.

Australian Foreign Minister Julie Bishop, in a statement, said that one of the passengers listed as British was a dual Australian-UK national. She said her office is working with UK authorities and taking the lead in providing consular assistance to the male crash victim’s family.

The Airbus A32 jet was flying at 37,000 feet when it disappeared after it entered Egyptian Airspace, reports CNN. The news agency’s meteorologist, Michael Guy, says conditions were clear and calm when the jet crossed the Mediterranean.

In the latest assessment by AirlineRatings, EgyptAir and EgytpAir Express got 5 out of 7 for safety rating and 4 out of 7 for product rating.

According to AirSafe, the last incident involving an EgyptAir was Flight 667 on July 29, 2011, when an electrical fire broke out in an area beneath the cockpit of the plane leaving from Cairo for Jeddah, Saudi Arabia. No one among the 317 people aboard the plane were killed.

The list had eight events in which at least one passenger died, beginning in 1971 through 2002. Besides the Jeddah-bound plane, there was another incident involving the air carrier in February 2000 when an unscheduled international flight from Johannesburg, South Africa, to Harare, Zimbabwe, attempted a landing at bad weather, causing significant damage to the jet, but no one among the 17 crew members or 76 passengers were seriously injured.