A charter airliner carrying 148 people -- mostly French tourists -- crashed into the Red Sea shortly after takeoff yesterday from the resort of Sharm el-Sheikh, officials said. There were no reports of survivors as searchers pulled bodies and body parts from waters strewn with floating debris.
The military sent helicopters and small patrol boats into the area where the Boeing 737 jet went down a little before 5am local time, but no survivors had been found nine hours later.
After the flight by small carrier Air Flash took off, en route for Paris with a stop scheduled in Cairo for a crew change, it quickly disappeared from radar south of the airport, said airport officials using customary anonymity.
French Deputy Transportation Minister Dominique Bussereau told reporters yesterday at Charles de Gaulle airport outside Paris that the flight had a problem on takeoff and the pilot tried to turn back. Egyptian airport officials said earlier there had been no distress call.
The crash occurred amid a week of heightened concerns about terrorist threats from the air that have led to increased security and canceled flights around the world.
But Egypt's Civil Aviation Ministry initially ruled out terrorism, calling the crash an "accident" apparently caused by a mechanical problem.
"Up until now, the cause is a technical one," Minister of Civil Aviation Ahmed Shafeeq told state-run Egyptian television. "There was a malfunction that made it difficult for the crew to ... save the plane."
Shafeeq said some of the plane wreckage had been found as well as some bodies.
"We are looking to see if there are any survivors," he said.
A marine official in a nearby port said at least 50 body parts had been found.
A French Foreign Ministry spokesman said that 133 of the people aboard were French tourists. A French Embassy official in Cairo said he had seen a list of people aboard that showed one Moroccan tourist and 13 crew members were also aboard.
Family members waiting to pick up their loved ones at Charles de Gaulle early yesterday were discreetly pulled aside by authorities and taken by shuttle bus to a nearby hotel.
Looking pale and shaken, a couple in their 50s arrived at the terminal, where the man asked an airport official: "My children are at Sharm. How do I find out if they were on the plane?"
At the airline's offices in Cairo, about 20 people had gathered, including weeping relatives of crew members.
One distraught man said his sister worked for the airline and he had spoken to her on Friday night but "after this, I don't know anything."
"Pray to God that she's OK," the man said.
Most of the vacationers had been on a tour organized by FRAM, one of France's largest travel operators.
French Prime Minister Jean-Pierre Raffarin said French authorities would make themselves available to the Egyptians "in order to shed light as quickly as possible on this catastrophe that has plunged our country into mourning."
But French anti-terrorism authorities in Paris said they did not expect to open an investigation, since the crash appeared to be an accident.
Air Flash said in a statement that the wreckage was found about 15km from the airport, according to the Egyptian news agency MENA.
Emergency teams rushed to the scene and found wreckage of the jet close to the coast in an area of the sea filled with floating suitcases and other debris from the crash, according to MENA. They were attempting to locate survivors but did not find any after searching through the morning and into the afternoon.
A German who runs a diving center in Sharm el-Sheikh described Egyptian Navy ships and helicopters combing the crash site, which he called one of the deepest parts of the sea in the area.
"Nobody heard a crash or an explosion," Mark Marger said.
Engineers from the national carrier EgyptAir rushed in to help determine what happened.
Air Flash said the 737 was one of just two it owned. The company said it had been in business for six years, but provided few other details in its statement carried by MENA.
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