[Bluehorseshoe]

Algeria's national airline, Air Algerie, says it has lost contact with one of its planes flying from Burkina Faso to Algiers across the Sahara.

Contact was lost about 50 minutes after take-off from Ouagadougou, the airline said.

The passenger airliner was last seen at 0155 GMT, it added. It should have landed at 0510.

Flight AH 5017 had 110 passengers and six crew on board, Spanish airline Swiftair, which owns the plane, said.

"In keeping with procedures, Air Algerie has launched its emergency plan," Air Algerie officials, quoted by APS news agency (in French), said.
'Poor visibility'

The plane is operated by Air Algerie and chartered from Swiftair.

In a statement (in Spanish), Swiftair said that the aircraft was an MD83 and that they were unable to establish contact with the plane.

An Algerian official had previously told Reuters that the plane was an Airbus A320.

An unnamed Air Algerie company source, speaking to AFP news agency, said: "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."

"Contact was lost after the change of course."

Flight AH 5017 flies the Ouagadougou-Algiers route four times a week, AFP reported.

Algerian nationals were among those on board, Algerian newspaper El-Nahar reported.

In February, a military plane in Algeria crashed, killing 77 people on board.

The Hercules C-130 crashed into a mountain in Oum al-Bouaghi province, en route to Constantine, in bad weather conditions. Only one person on board survived.

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-28460625

[boeing power]

[Ralphie Halves]

Small chance IMO, but possible copycat crime. Militant Muslims are all over that area, taking over sparsely populated areas. Not sure they have the tech to take down a plane though.

Probably just a failure of some sort.

[BatemanPatrickl]

Small chance IMO, but possible copycat crime. Militant Muslims are all over that area, taking over sparsely populated areas. Not sure they have the tech to take down a plane though.

Probably just a failure of some sort.

Not confident it is a copycat crime; most likely a mechanical failure.

[Ralphie Halves]

I remember watching a VICE video that said never to fly in the Congo because the planes there crash all the time. I had to laugh. How the penetrate does that happen "all the time" anymore??

[Bluehorseshoe]

It was weather.

The disappeared Air Algerie flight AH5017 has crashed in Niger after flying through violent storms, it has been confirmed.

Algerian television station Elnahar confirmed the plane went down due to bad weather.

The region was badly affected by violent storms and it was earlier said the plane was rerouted while it was flying over Mali.

The plane crashed after passing the capital of Niger and it is presumed all 116 people on board have been killed. The flight was said to have been found near Niamey, the capital of Niger.

There were six crew members, mostly Spanish, and 110 passengers, comprising mainly French people, when the plane went down.

The flight, which departed from the Burkinan capital city of Ouagadougou, lost contact with ground control while it was cruising above Malian airspace and was said to be an hour away from the Algerian border.