An Air Algerie flight that went missing this morning en route to Algiers from Burkina Faso has reportedly crashed.
Flight AH 5017 heading from Ouagadougou in Burkina Faso to Algiers with 110 passengers and six crew members on board lost contact with air traffic control an hour after it took off from Burkina Faso.
Agence France Presse reported that the plane was “not far from the Algerian frontier when the crew was asked to make a detour because of poor visibility and to prevent the risk of collision with another aircraft on the Algiers-Bamako route.”
Burkino Faso Transport Minister Jean Bertin Ouedrago told Reuters that the aircraft was asked to change its route because of a storm in the area. Northern Mali was hit with a powerful thunderstorm overnight.
Spanish airline company Swiftair who operated the flight said in a notice on its website that the aircraft took off from Burkina Faso at 1.17am local time and was supposed to land in Algiers at 05.10am local time but never reached its destination.
Kara Terki, an Air Algerie representative, told reporters in Burkina Faso that the passenger list included 50 French, 24 Burkinabe, eight Lebanese, four Algerians, two passengers from Luxembourg, one Belgian, one Swiss, one Nigerian, one Cameroonian, one Ukrainian and one Romanian. The six crew members are Spanish.
The crash is the third commercial air disaster in two weeks and the second over the past two days. On Wednesday, a TransAsia Airways plane crashed in Taiwan while attempting an emergency landing in stormy weather, killing 48. On July 17, a Malaysia Airlines plane was downed over Ukraine, killing 298.
