Air Algerie loses contact with plane

A Swiftair MD-83 airplane is seen in this undated photo. Authorities have lost contact with an Air Algerie flight en route from Ouagadougou in Burkina Faso to Algiers with 110 passengers on board, Algeria's APS state news agency and a Spanish airline company said on Thursday. [Photo/Agencies]

ALGIERS - An Air Algerie flight en route from Ouagadougou in Burkina Faso to Algiers is missing with 110 passengers on board, almost half of them French citizens, officials said on Thursday.

There were no clear indications of what might of happened to the flight en route north to Algiers, but Burkino Faso Transport Minister Jean Bertin Ouedrago said the aircraft asked to change route at 0138 GMT because of a storm in the area.

McDonnell Douglas MD-83 Twin rear-engined, short-medium range airliner More powerful version of the MD-80 type, based on earlier DC-9 Range: 4,637km (2,881 miles) Capacity: 172 passengers First flew: 1985

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.

Algeria's state news agency APS said authorities lost contact with flight AH 5017 an hour after it took off from Burkina Faso, but other officials gave differing accounts of the times of contact, adding to confusion about the fate of the flight and where it might be.

Swiftair, the private Spanish company that owns the aircraft, confirmed it had lost contact with the MD-83 operated by Air Algerie, which it said was carrying 110 passengers and six crew.

An Air Algerie representative in Burkina Faso, Kara Terki, told a news conference that all the passengers on the plane were in transit, either for Europe, the Middle East or Canada.

He said the passenger list included 50 French, 24 Burkinabe, eight Lebanese, four Algerians, two from Luxembourg, one Belgian, one Swiss, one Nigerian, one Cameroonian, one Ukrainian and one Romanian. Lebanese officials said there were at least 10 Lebanese citizens on the flight.

A spokeswoman for SEPLA, Spain's pilots union, said the six crew were from Spain. She could not give any further details.

Air Algerie is Algeria's national airline, with flights to 28 countries.

Air Algerie's last major accident was in 2003 when one of its planes crashed shortly after take-off from the southern city of Tamanrasset, killing 102 people.

In February this year, 77 people died when an Algerian military transport plane crashed into a mountain in eastern Algeria.