REPUBLIKA.CO.ID, ALGIERS - Authorities had lost contact with an Air Algerie flight en route from Ouagadougou in Burkina Faso to Algiers with 116 passengers including crew on board, Algeria's APS state news agency and a Spanish airline company said on Thursday.

APS said authorities lost contact with flight AH 5017 an hour after it took off from Burkina Faso, although other officials gave other timings, adding to confusion about the fate of the flight and where it might be. Spanish private airline company Swiftair confirmed it had no contact with its MD-83 aircraft operated by Air Algerie, which it said was carrying 110 passengers and six crew.

The company said in a notice posted on its website that the aircraft took off from Burkina Faso at 0117 GMT (2117 ET) and was supposed to land in Algiers at 0510 GMT but never reached its destination. An Algerian aviation official said the last contact Algerian authorities had with a missing Air Algerie aircraft was at 0155 GMT when it was flying over Gao, Mali.

Burkinabe authorities have set up a crisis unit in Ouagadougou airport to provide information to families of people on the flight. A diplomat in the Malian capital Bamako said that the north of the country - which lies on the plane's likely flight path - was struck by a powerful sandstorm overnight. 

Issa Saly Maiga, head of Mali's National Civil Aviation Agency, said that a search was under way for the missing flight. Whatever is the fate of the flight, the loss of contact is likely to add the to jitters in the airline industry after a Malaysia Airlines plane was downed over Ukraine last week, a TransAsia Airways crashed off Taiwan during a thunderstorm on Wednesday and airlines canceled flights into Tel Aviv due to the conflict in Gaza.

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