ALGERIE | Official: Air Algerie flight ‘probably crashed’

An MD-83 aircraft in the livery of Swiftair lands in Brussels (last May). A similar airliner disappeared from radar early yesterday over northern Mali

An Air Algerie flight carrying 116 people from Burkina Faso to Algeria’s capital disappeared from radar early yesterday over northern Mali, officials said. France’s foreign minister said no wreckage had been found, but that the plane “probably crashed.”
Air navigation services lost track of the MD-83 about 50 minutes after takeoff from Ouagadougou, the capital of Burkina Faso, at 0155 GMT Thursday, the official Algerian news agency APS said.
“Despite an intensive search, at the moment I speak no trace of the aircraft has been found,” French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius told reporters in Paris. “The plane has probably crashed.”
Two French fighter jets are among aircraft scouring the rugged north of Mali for the plane, which was traveling from Burkina Faso’s capital, Ouagadougou, to Algiers, the Algerian capital.
More than 50 French were onboard the plane along with 27 Burkina Faso nationals and passengers from a dozen other countries. The flight crew was Spanish.
The flight was being operated by Spanish airline Swiftair, the company said in a statement, and the plane belonged to Swiftair.
The plane sent its last message around 0130 GMT, asking Niger air control to change its route because of heavy rains in the area, Burkina Faso Transport Minister Jean Bertin Ouedraogo said.
The disappearance of the Air Algerie plane comes after a spate of aviation disasters. Fliers around the globe have been on edge ever since Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 disappeared in March on its way to Beijing. Searchers have yet to find a single piece of wreckage from the jet with 239 people on board.
Last week, a Malaysia Airlines flight was shot down by a surface-to-air missile while flying over a war-torn section of Ukraine. The back-to-back disasters involving Boeing 777s flown by the same airline were too much of a coincidence for many fliers.
Then this week, U.S. and European airlines started canceling flights to Tel Aviv after a rocket landed near the city’s airport. Finally, on Wednesday, a Taiwanese plane crashed during a storm, killing 48 people.
It’s easy to see why fliers are jittery, but air travel is relatively safe.
There have been two deaths for every 100 million passengers on commercial flights in the last decade, excluding acts of terrorism.
French Transport Minister Frederic Cuvillier said the Air Algerie flight vanished over northern Mali. He spoke yesterday from a crisis center set up in the French Foreign Ministry. Cuvillier didn’t specify exactly where the plane disappeared over Mali, or whether it was in an area controlled by rebels.
But Algerian Prime Minister Abdelmalek Sellal said on Algerian state television said that 10 minutes before disappearing, it was in contact with air traffic controllers in Gao, a city essentially under the control of the Malian government, though it has seen lingering separatist violence.
The plane had been missing for hours before the news was made public. It wasn’t immediately clear why airline or government officials didn’t make it public earlier.
The flight path of the plane from Ouagadougou to Algiers wasn’t immediately clear. Ouagadougou is in a nearly straight line south of Algiers, passing over Mali where unrest continues in the north.
Northern Mali fell under control of ethnic Tuareg separatists and then al-Qaida-linked Islamic extremists following a military coup in 2012. A French-led intervention last year scattered the extremists, but the Tuaregs have pushed back against the authority of the Bamako-based government.
A senior French official said it seems unlikely that fighters in Mali had the kind of weaponry that could shoot down a plane.
Swiftair, a private Spanish airline, said the plane was carrying 110 passengers and six crew, and left Burkina Faso for Algiers at 0117 GMT Thursday (9:17 p.m. EDT Wednesday), but had not arrived at the scheduled time of 0510 GMT (1:10 a.m. EDT Thursday). AP

plane lands safely in toronto after engine trouble

Authorities say a WestJet plane bound for Calgary landed safely at Toronto’s Pearson Airport on an unscheduled stop due to an engine problem.
Airport spokesman Scott Armstrong said Friday that WestJet Flight 585 was headed from Hamilton to Calgary.
Officials say the plane was met by emergency crews when it landed.
Police say the Boeing 737 had a problem with one of its engines but all of the 152 people on board are safe.

Aomar Ouali & Brahima Quedraogo