[Video] Crashed EgyptAir Plane Was in Eritrea and Tunisia Before Trip to France

Plane Was in Eritrea and Tunisia Before Trip to France

By New York Times

EgyptAir Flight 804 made multiple stops — in Eritrea, Tunisia and Egypt — in the 24 hours before it took off from Paris on Wednesday night, bound for Cairo, according to data from Flightradar24, a website that tracks flights in real time, that was compiled by Agence France-Presse.

Airbus, the plane’s manufacturer, confirmed on Thursday that the plane was an Airbus A320, a twin-engine jetliner that can typically carry up to 220 passengers and stay in service for 30 or 40 years.

The plane was delivered to EgyptAir in November 2003 and had accumulated 48,000 hours of flying time, the company said.

It is common for airlines to keep their planes in nearly constant motion, making several journeys every day, and the plane that became Flight 804 was no exception.

It left Cairo on Tuesday night bound for Asmara, the capital of the East African nation of Eritrea. At 4:30 a.m. Wednesday, it took off to return to Cairo, where it stayed for two hours.

Then, at 8:21 a.m., the plane left Cairo for Tunis, a flight that took just over three hours. It spent just over an hour on the ground there and then flew back to Cairo, arriving at 3:17 p.m.

The afternoon stopover in Cairo lasted less than two hours, and the next destination was the Charles de Gaulle airport outside Paris, where it landed at 9:55 p.m. Wednesday.

The fateful departure back toward Cairo took place shortly after 11 p.m. The plane had covered most of the distance when it disappeared from radar somewhere over the Mediterranean Sea about 2:30 a.m., roughly a half-hour before it was due to arrive in Cairo. (All times are local.)

#EgyptAir left #Eritrea & landed safely in Egypt.Cleared to fly Egypt-Tunisia,Tunisia-Egypt,Egypt-France & France-Egypt.Leave Eritrea alone.

— Amb. Girma Asmerom (@GirmaAsmerom) May 20, 2016

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EgyptAir has published a list of the 56 passengers on board by nationality:

UPDATE Egyptair flight #MS804 Passenger nationalities https://t.co/4YsFPOJx2N pic.twitter.com/C4YFq4tIz1

— AIRLIVE (@airlivenet) May 19, 2016

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