Unconfirmed info: 50 French passengers aboard AH5017

Details start appearing over the disappearance of the Algerian flight. According to Air Algerie, flight AH5017 was carrying 110 passengers and six crew members and went missing over West Africa.

The plane was scheduled to land in Algiers, but disappeared from the air-traffic controllers' radar hours ago. There has been no confirmed contact with the crew since Air Algerie also claims. According to a Spanish TV channel there were about 50 French nationals on board. The information was confirmed by Fredric Cuvillier, France's junior transport minister.

Information started coming from Spain because the McDonnell Douglas MD-83 airliner was owned by Spanish company Swiftair with a Spanish crew and operated by Air Algerie. Unconfirmed reports claim the medium size plane crashed near Niamey, the capital of Niger.

Air Algerie has already launched an emergency plan in the desperate attempt to find the plane or the possible wreck and released a statement regarding the incident. “The signal was lost after the plane changed direction. The plane was not far from the border with Algeria when we asked the pilots to reroute because of poor visibility and to avoid the risk that they could collide with another plane,” part of the official statement released by Air Algerie.