An Air Algerie flight en route to Algiers from Burkina Faso with 116 people aboard disappeared from radar early Thursday over the Sahara, the official Algerian news agency said. The six person crew -- including the two pilots -- are Spanish, the Spanish newspaper El Paisreports.
French Transport Minister Frédéric Cuvillier says 'likely many' French passengers were aboard the missing flight, France 24 TV reports.
Air navigation services lost track of AH0517 about 50 minutes after takeoff at 0155 GMT, the agency said. That means that it had been missing for hours before the news was made public.
"In keeping with procedures, Air Algerie has launched its emergency plan," the APS agency quoted the airline as saying.
Swiftair, the owner of missing plane operated by Air Algerie, Algeria's national airline says 110 passengers and 6 crew were aboard. The aircraft is an MD-83, according to Reuters.
The French news agency AFP quotes an unidentified source with the airlines as saying 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."
Flight AH 5017 flies the Ouagadougou-Algiers route four times a week, AFP reported.
The flight path of the plane from Ouagadougou, the capital of the west African nation of Burkina Faso, to Algiers was not immediately clear. It was supposed to land in the Algerian capital at 0510 local time, according to The Daily Star.
Ougadougou is in a nearly straight line south of Algiers, passing over Mali where unrest continues in the north.
However, a senior French official said it was unlikely that fighters in Mali had weaponry that could shoot down a plane, the Associated Press reports. The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because she was not authorized to speak for attribution, said the fights have shoulder-fired weapons which could not hit an aircraft at cruising altitude.