Contact lost with Air Algerie aircraft carrying 116 people

Authorities have confirmed that contact has been lost 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 made the annoucement. APS said that authorities had lost contact with flight AH 5017 an hour after it took off from Burkina Faso, although other officials have given alternative timings.

Spanish private airline company, Swiftair, confirmed it had no contact with its MD-83 aircraft operated by Air Algerie, which it said was carrying 110 passengers and six crew. The company posted on its website that the aircraft took off at 0117 GMT and was due to land in Algiers at 6.10am British Time, but that it never reached its destination.

Burkinabe authorities have set up a crisis unit in Ouagadougou Airport to provide information to families of the people on board the flight. While Issa Saly Maiga, head of Mali’s National Civil Aviation Agency said that a search was underway for the missing flight. “We do not know if the plain is in Malian territory,” he told new agency, Reuters. “Aviation authorities are mobilised in all the countries concerned – Burkina Faso, Mali, Niger, Algeria and even Spain.”