EgyptAir flight MS804 disappears from radar between Paris and Cairo

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EgyptAir are reporting that one of its flights, MS804, from Paris to Cairo has 'disappeared from radar'.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-36309492

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Airline says plane, which took off from France’s Charles de Gaulle airport late on Wednesday night, has gone missing with 66 people on board

EgyptAir A320 aircraft flight number MS804 lost contact with radar above the Mediterranean sea about 280km (175 miles) from the Egyptian seacoast at 2.30am [local time] as the flight was expected to arrive Cairo airport at 3.15am.

http://www.theguardian.com/world/live/2 ... ve-updates

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There's already a post about this, here.

Francois Hollande, the french President has confirmed that the plane 'has crashed'. He says that all available information thus far points to this conclusion.
To this effect, a massive search and rescue operation is now underway in the Mediterranean sea.

There is a tense atmosphere with officials, over the possibility this may have been a terrorist involved incident after recent events in Paris and the bombing of a plane in October 2015 by ISIS - who directly afterwards 'vowed to target Egypt and the Westerners who visit it', although there is no physical evidence for this so far.

Source: BBC News

edit:

A Maersk Shipping employee who previously posted the ship they were in command of had been called in to help search the area has posted an image from the scene, showing what he claims to be chairs and life jackets, see link at beginning of this line.
update: "Greece's lead air accident investigator Athanasios Binis said items including lifejackets found near Karpathos were not from the Airbus A320. - "An assessment of the finds showed that they do not belong to an aircraft," he said."

[lukasz1985]

I love that statement "disappear from radar". Sounds like if they're hoping it will get back on the radar; that's hilarious actually.

[Drury]

wut, that's normal common phrase to describe a plane literally disappearing from radar, I don't know how else you'd put it.

[lukasz1985]

Just say "aircraft lost"? Whatever.

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Just say "aircraft lost"? Whatever.

An aircraft disappearing from radar is not guarantee the plane has been lost. A few things can go wrong to cause a minor and temporary blip in radar viewing. However it is quite rare with modern technology, especially over a period of any real amount of time. By the time EgyptAir announced the missing plane, it had been off radars for at least 3 hours.

[lukasz1985]

And surely it gonna appear there back again.. you don't get the point: it is not about the technical stuff - if somebody is going to publicly announce that an aircraft is lost to the public it's nearly obvious thing that the plane is lost at the point of time when the public gets that information. How many times have you heard an announcement that the plane appeared back again on the radar? Probably not many times (if ever).

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And surely it gonna appear there back again.. you don't get the point: it is not about the technical stuff - if somebody is going to publicly announce that an aircraft is lost to the public it's nearly obvious thing that the plane is lost at the point of time when the public gets that information. How many times have you heard an announcement that the plane appeared back again on the radar? Probably not many times (if ever).

It isn't entirely unheard of. That's why the wait a reasonable time before making an announcement. It's also still the reason for wording it as such, to not cause major alarm and panic until 100% sure of the outcome.

[Pilot]

And surely it gonna appear there back again.. you don't get the point: it is not about the technical stuff - if somebody is going to publicly announce that an aircraft is lost to the public it's nearly obvious thing that the plane is lost at the point of time when the public gets that information. How many times have you heard an announcement that the plane appeared back again on the radar? Probably not many times (if ever).

It has been known for aircraft to disappear off radar, and then reappear several hours later several hundred miles off course, and land safely. I think it happened at least once in Indonesia, I think an Airline called Adam Air. In that time, it's possible it was announced as missing, and then they said it landed safely, I'm not entirely sure though, as I don't have much knowledge of Indonesian Media. But it isn't an entirely unheard of thing.

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It has been known for aircraft to disappear off radar, and then reappear several hours later several hundred miles off course, and land safely.

Yes, Adam Air Flight 782.
It flew into a radar 'black spot' and disappeared off radars for several hours. It eventually landed entirely safely on the island of Sumba, it's intended destination was Makassar on the island of Sulawesi. A mere 300 miles (481km) from Makassar. Also in opposite directions, southeast instead of northeast. The pilot was swiftly fired.
News articles from the period (2006) referred by wikipedia seem to no longer exist, just an Aviation Safety article.

It goes to show though, you should never report an aircraft as lost, merely off radar. Not until you have had time to at minimum, get a good feel for what happened immediately before the radar loss. The current EgyptAir plane, it was later assessed that the plane suffered a massive drop in altitude, as well as performing severe turns that passenger planes are simply not designed to do, which indicates that the plane was almost certainly out of control in its final few radar captures. This mixed with the loss of radar combined meant EgyptAir made the call to later name the plane as lost, as opposed to simply 'missing from radar' after analysing the radar further.