Air Algerie plane Boeing MD-83 went missing over Gao in Mali in Africa on 24 July 2014. The plane was carrying 119 passengers, mostly French and Spanish nationals, from Burkina Faso to Algiers. The plane had taken off from Ouagadougou in Burkina Faso.
The airplane was a McDonnell Douglas MD-83 leased from Spanish company Swiftair.
Past air accidents in Algeria
In February 2014, one of Algeria's worst air disasters, a C-130 military aircraft carrying 78 people crashed in poor weather in the mountainous northeast, killing more than 70 people. The plane was flying from the desert garrison town of Tamanrasset in Algeria to Constantine.
In March 2003, an Air Algerie passenger plane crashed on takeoff from Tamanrasset after one of its engines caught fire. This was the worst ever air disaster in country's aviation history in which all but one of 103 people on board were killed.
Comment
The missing of Air Algeie happened one and a half month after the Malaysian airplane MH370 went missing with all passengers on board in the Indian Ocean in June 2014. Also the incident happened one week after the Malaysia airplane MH-17 crashed in the eastern Ukraine killing 298 passengers on board on 17 July 2014. These three incidents in a gap of one and a half month have sent jitters among the major airlines of the world.
Wreckage of Algerian plane found
Wreckage of an Algerian plane carrying 116 people that is believed to have gone down in Mali on 24th July has been found, President Ibrahim Boubakar Keita said.
Keita told journalists at the presidential palace in Bamako that wreckage had been located between Kidal and Tessalit in the far north of the country.