An EgyptAir plane made abrupt turns and plunged steeply Thursday shortly before disappearing from radar over the Mediterranean Sea, a Greek official said, deepening the mystery over the possible final moments aboard the Cairo-bound plane with 66 people onboard.
Even as details emerged of the last recorded movements, rescue vessels and aircraft combed the sea between Greece’s southern islands and the Egyptian coast, and investigators left open all scenarios.
“We don’t deny that it could be a terrorist attack or a technical issue, and we are exploring all options,” Egypt’s civil aviation minister, Sherif Fathy, told reporters.
Officials in Paris, where the flight began, also opened their own investigations into why the Airbus A320 vanished about 45 minutes from its scheduled landing in Cairo. French President François Hollande said the plane had “crashed,” but he gave no more details on what could have brought down the plane.
“No hypothesis is favored or ruled out at this stage,” a statement from the French prosecutor’s office said about its investigation.
But the sudden cut from ground contact raised inevitable parallels with aircraft incidents caused at cruising altitude by attacks, bombs or pilot intervention rather than technical malfunctions.
The accounts from Greece — the last that flight controllers were in contact with the pilot — detailed a baffling deviation from the flight path.
The Airbus made “sudden swerves” and dropped from 37,000 feet to 15,000 feet moments after crossing from the Greek flight control area into Egypt’s jurisdiction, said Greece’s defense minister, Panos Kammenos.
The first turn was a sharp, 90-degree veer to the east after passing over the Greek island of Karpathos, Kammenos told reporters in Athens. Then the plane made a full circular loop — a “360 degree turn,” Kammenos said.
“We cannot rule anything out,” Egyptian Prime Minister Sherif Ismail told reporters at Cairo’s airport.
Earlier, there was conflicting information about whether officials received a distress signal from the aircraft. The airline said it received one from the Airbus A320, but the Egyptian armed forces later said they were unaware of such a signal.