UPDATING All Day, Every Day
dailystar.com.lb The missing Air Algerie plane crashed in Niger Thursday afternoon, Ennahar Algeria TV reported.
cbc.ca An Air Algerie passenger plane has crashed with 116 people, including five Canadians, on board after losing radio contact on its route from Burkina Faso to Algiers in northern Africa.
dailymail.co.uk An Air Algerie flight that went missing with 116 people on board including 50 French nationals has crashed, an Algerian aviation official said.
dailystar.com.lb The plane had disappeared from radar with at least 20 of its passengers Lebanese, a source at Lebanon's consulate in Burkina Faso initially told The Daily Star, with officials later confirming the number.
Original Report
CONTACT has been lost with a plane carrying 110 passengers and six crew in northern Africa. The Air Algerie flight went missing en route over Mali near Gao about 50 minutes into the flight from Ouagadougou (Burkina Faso) to Algiers (Algeria). There are no reports that the aircraft, a Swiftair McDonnell Douglas MD-83, has landed at nearby airports.
bbc.com An unnamed Air Algerie company source, speaking to AFP news agency, said: ''The plane was not far from the Algerian frontier when the crew was asked to make a detour because of poor visibility and to prevent the risk of collision with another aircraft on the Algiers-Bamako route.''
dnaindia.com Two French fighter jets based in the region have been dispatched to try to locate the airliner along its probable route, a French army spokesman said. Niger security sources said planes were flying over the border region with Mali to search for the flight.
news.sky.com Ouagadougou is in a nearly straight line south of Algiers, separated by Mali where unrest continues in the north of the country. Airlines had been warned not to fly over Mali in recent days, Sky News understands. However, a senior French official said it is unlikely that fighters in Mali could shoot down a plane.
reuters Spanish private airline company Swiftair confirmed it had no contact with its MD-83 aircraft operated by Air Algerie. An Algieran official had earlier said it was an Airbus A320.
bloomberg A loss of the aircraft would mark the third major accident in a week around the world for commercial airliners. A Malaysian Air Boeing Co. (BA) 777 went down over eastern Ukraine on July 17 following a suspected missile strike, killing all 298 people on board, while an ATR-72 turbo-prop crash yesterday on the Penghu Islands in Taiwan left 48 people dead.
mg.co.za One of Algeria's worst air disasters occurred in February this year, when a C-130 military aircraft carrying 78 people crashed in poor weather in the mountainous north-east, killing more than 70 people. The plane was flying from the desert garrison town of Tamanrasset in Algeria's deep south to Constantine, 320km east of Algiers.
