Official Says Missing Air Algerie Flight Has Crashed

An Air Algerie aviation flight official has claimed the missing flight flight AH5017 has crashed.
“I can confirm that it has crashed,” the official said, declining to give details of where the plane was or what caused the accident.
Swiftair, the Spanish airline operated by Air Algerie, said it lost contact with MD83 aircraft — with 110 passengers and six crew members — about 50 minutes after takeoff from Ougadougou, the capital of the west African nation. The four-hour flight was scheduled to arrive in Algiers at 5:40 a.m. local time.
 Agence France-Presse reports that 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.”