The Greek government has issued a timeline of the moments leading up to the moment EgyptAir Flight 804 disappeared from radar early Thursday after failing to acknowledge a call from Athens air traffic controllers.
The flight from Paris to Cairo, with 66 passengers and crew on board, is believed to have crashed in the Mediterranean Sea off the Greek island of Crete early Thursday morning. While investigators are saying it is more likely an act of terror than a mechanical issue, no one has claimed responsibility for any terror act.
Egyptian Prime Minister Sherif Ismail said it was too early to say whether a technical problem or a terror attack caused the plane to crash. "We cannot rule anything out," he told reporters at Cairo airport.
Here is the timeline Greek officials released:
(Times are local Greece time)
12:09 a.m. Thursday -- Flight 804 takes off from Paris' Charles de Gaulle Airport headed to Cairo, Egypt.
1:24 a.m. -- The Airbus A320 enters Greek airspace. Athens air traffic control authorizes the plane to continue its course.
1:48 a.m. -- Still in Greek airspace, the plane checks in at the next control point -- Key Island, south of Athens. The pilot was cheerful and thanked the air traffic controllers, the Hellenic (Greek) Civil Aviation Authority said.
2:27 a.m. -- Athens air traffic control tries to contact the pilots to transfer communications control from Greece to Egypt. Despite repeated calls, the pilots did not respond. The air traffic controller calls the distress frequency, but still does not get an answer.
2:29 a.m. -- At about the same time the aircraft leaves Greek airspace, its signal drops from radar 8 miles south-southeast of Kumbi, an aviation reporting point in the Mediterranean Sea. Immediately afterward, the Greek Air Force was summoned for possible radar target tracking. But the plane has not been found.
2:45 a.m. -- Search-and-rescue operations begin, according to Greek officials.
According to Greek Defense Minister Panos Kammenos, “the course of the aircraft was south and south-east of Kassos and Karpathos (islands)..immediately after it entered Cairo FIR (airspace) and made swerves and a descent I describe -- 90 degrees left and then 360 degrees to the right.”
Greece, along with other countries have mounted a search in the area south of the island of Karpathos.
