By Christopher Bjork, Robert Wall and Stacy Meichtry
Air Algérie lost contact with Flight 5017 after takeoff from
Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso, as the jetliner headed to Algiers with
116 people on board, Algeria's state news agency and the plane's
operator said Thursday.
French Secretary of Transport Frédéric Cuvillier told reporters
the plane disappeared over Northern Mali, where Islamist militants
are fighting the Malian government and French forces. Numerous
French nationals were aboard the missing plane, Mr. Cuvillier
said.
Contact with the Boeing Co. MD-83, carrying 110 passengers and
six crew members, was lost at about 1:55 a.m. local time, 50
minutes after the jet had taken off, the Algerian government's
official news agency said in a statement. "Air Algérie launched
[an] emergency plan," the agency added. It gave no other
details.
An official at the directorate of Ouagadougou Airport said there
had been an incident, "but for the moment we don't know anything
more." He refused to give his name because he wasn't authorized to
speak to reporters.
The missing plane has triggered a second global scramble among
aviation regulators and safety officials in as many weeks,
following the downing last week of Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 over
war-torn eastern Ukraine.
It also follows a temporary flight ban imposed by the U.S.
Federal Aviation Administration on American carriers using Tel Aviv
airport, after a Hamas-fired rocket landed nearby earlier this
week. The ban was lifted late Wednesday.
On Wednesday, forty-eight people died and 10 were injured after
a TransAsia Airways plane went down in the outlying Penghu islands,
off the coast of Taiwan.
The flight path of the missing Algerian jet isn't yet clear. The
FAA has warned airlines to be extra vigilant when flying over
Mali.
There is no indication the jet was shot down and no confirmation
of a crash.
Still, amid questions by airline executives and regulators over
whether MH17 should have been flying over eastern Ukraine, the Air
Algérie jet's flight path will be closely scrutinized.
The FAA has banned U.S. carriers of flying over Mali at lower
altitudes. The FAA cited "insurgent activity," including the threat
of antiaircraft missiles, rocket-propelled grenades and rockets.
Apart from worries about insurgent threats in Mali, the Algerian
government has been keeping a close watch on airspace on its
eastern border, where violence in Libya has led to flight bans
there.
Spanish charter company Swiftair was operating the jet for the
Algerian flag carrier. "We have no contact with the airplane," the
Madrid-based company in a statement. The plane was due to land in
Algiers at 6:10 a.m. local time, Swiftair said.
Swiftair operated two MD-83s planes for Air Algérie, one built
in 1989 and the other in 1996, according to AeroTransport Data
Bank, a French company that tracks airplanes. Privately-held
Swiftair was established in 1986 and has a fleet of more than 30
planes. Most of the jets are older models such as Boeing 727s and
737s, as well as MD-83s.
All six crew aboard the missing Air Algérie airplane are Spanish
nationals, according to Spain's main pilots' union.
France's foreign ministry said its embassies in Algeria and
Burkina Faso were working with the airline and local authorities to
locate the plane. France has a large military presence in the
region with scores of troops operating in Mali, a landlocked
country wedged between Algeria and Burkina Faso.
"We are totally mobilized," a French foreign ministry spokesman
said.
France and Algeria have dispatched planes to Mali to search for
the missing plane, a Malian government official said.
Mali's Communication Minister Mamadou Camara said the planes are
searching a huge and sparsely populated swath of his West African
country where the Air Algérie flight was last known to be
flying.
"The zone is extremely vast," Mr. Camara said, adding that he
had no further information about the circumstances under which the
plane went missing. "To confirm that this plane crashed you must
first find the site of the crash.," he said
Officials at Burkina Faso's National Civil Aviation Agency have
set up a crisis room to field calls and assess reports on what
might have happened to the missing plane. As phones rang loudly and
officials shouted over each other in the background, one of the
officials, Zoure Nana Guissou, said "We're in the process of
assembling the info as quickly as we can."
The government's fast reaction illustrates how African air
safety management has changed in recent years. A decade ago, when
Africa accounted for about 25% of world-wide aviation fatalities
but less than 4% of global traffic, governments often reacted
slowly and chaotically to frequent accidents. While many African
governments still lack resources to carefully monitor carriers,
safety has improved significantly.
Outside assistance and pressure from the U.S., European Union
and other regions has been a big factor, as has the arrival of more
foreign carriers drawn by Africa's growing economies and resource
boom. As a result, countries including Russia and Indonesia in some
recent years have had worse safety records than much of Africa.
Nevertheless, accident rates in Africa remain typically higher
than in the rest of the world as the continent struggles with poor
infrastructure that has made flying there more difficult.
The International Air Transport Association said there were 61
accidents in the region between 2009 and 2013. The accident rate
during the period was 13.47 crashes per million flight hours in
Africa compared with the global average of 2.51 crashes.
IATA and the International Civil Aviation Organization have
embarked on a program to lift African airline safety performance to
global standards by next year.
Benoît Faucon in London, Inti Landauro in Paris, Dan Michaels in
Frankfurt and Drew Hinshaw in Abuja contributed to this
article.
Write to Christopher Bjork at christopher.bjork@wsj.com, Robert
Wall at robert.wall@wsj.com and Stacy Meichtry at
stacy.meichtry@wsj.com
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