Algeria said it lost contact with an airplane belonging to its national airline carrier Air Algerie, for a flight bound to the Algerian capital Algiers and coming from Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso.
The state news agency confirmed the news few minutes before its website went down, probably due to the high level of server requests received.
Contact with the airplane was lost after 50 minutes of take-off from the Ouagadougou airport, Algeria’s state news agency was reported to say.
Al Arabiya news reporter in Algiers said that most of the passengers are French.
Annahar, a leading Algerian news outlet, said that the lost airplane is an Airbus A320 and that the flight number is AH 5017.
The source says that air traffic controllers lost contact with the airbus exactly at 01:55 GMT.
News agency AFP reported that “the missing aircraft was a DC-9, which can seat up to 135 passengers.”
“around 110 people are listed as being on board the flight,” AFP added.
The Moroccan Times.
