PG Procter and Gamble Co

By Noemie Bisserbe in Paris and Dahlia Kholaif in Cairo 

Abdelrahman El Suhail didn't know he was parting ways with his children for the last time when he boarded EgyptAir Flight 804 Wednesday evening.

The Kuwaiti economic professor left his disabled children in the French capital for medical treatment and then, hours later, the Cairo-bound Airbus A320 carrying him and 65 others vanished from radar screens and crashed into the Mediterranean.

"I just hope it wasn't painful," said Mishary El Suhail, his nephew.

As investigators look into what brought down the jetliner, portraits of the passengers have begun to emerge from families and friends. They include an Egyptian who managed a French plant for Procter & Gamble as well as a young Chadian who attended one of France's most prestigious military and engineering schools.

In all, the jetliner was carrying people from a dozen countries, including the U.K., Belgium, Saudi Arabia, Sudan and Canada. But the heaviest losses were sustained by Egypt, which had 30 nationals aboard, and France, with 15.

News of the plane's disappearance in the early hours of Thursday sent family and friends hurrying to airports in Cairo and Paris in search of information.

In Paris, authorities summoned families to a hotel near Charles de Gaulle Airport for briefings. Some were later placed on an EgyptAir flight to Cairo. At Cairo's airport, dozens of relatives of the missing passengers were taken to a crisis center, where they waited all day without updates on the plane's mysterious disappearance.

Mishary El Suhail was praying for his uncle, having lost hope that any survivors would be found. Abdelrahman El Suhail had been due to attend a conference in Cairo, he said, adding, "God have mercy on his soul."

In the French town of Amiens, north of Paris, workers at a Procter & Gamble plant were churning out soap and detergent when Christophe Duron, the chief executive of the U.S. company's French unit, arrived on the factory floor to make a sad announcement: The factory's 40-year-old director, Ahmed Mohamed Helal, had been on the flight.

"Ahmed was not only a brilliant director, he was an extraordinary human being," Mr. Duron said.

Mr. Helal was married and the father of a teenage daughter and a young boy, said Ayman Abdelmeguid, a close friend and colleague of Mr. Helal.

"Ahmed was a remarkable person, very reliable, very loving, very supportive," Mr. Abdelmeguid said. "I have lost a friend, a brother, a mentor."

"He's a person you'd like to take as a role model for yourself or your children as a professional or as a person," said Karim Helmy, a friend who lives in Cairo.

At Saint-Cyr Coëtquidan, an elite engineering and military academy on the outskirts of Paris, cadets were mourning the loss of Seitchi Mahamat, a Chadian national.

Lt. Col. André Belenguer, an academy spokesman, said Mr. Mahamat had been finishing up his second year as part of the Saint Cyr's Second Battalion. The cadet had boarded the flight to return home to mourn the death of his mother, Lt. Col. Belenguer said.

Another passenger was a 52-year-old Saudi woman who works for the Saudi embassy in Cairo. Ambassador Ahmed Kattan, the kingdom's envoy in Egypt, told Saudi state television that she had traveled to France with her daughter for medical treatment. He didn't disclose further details.

In a lucky twist of fate for one man, Basem Hussein had been planning to take the doomed flight. But the 40-year-old judo coach decided to delay his trip by one day to meet a cousin in Paris. On Thursday, Mr. Hussein found himself toting luggage around Charles de Gaulle Airport, hearing updates about the flight's disappearance.

"I feel so lucky," he said.

--Tamer El-Ghobashy in Cairo and Nick Kostov, Inti Landauro and William Horobin in Paris contributed to this article.

Write to Noemie Bisserbe at noemie.bisserbe@wsj.com

(END) Dow Jones Newswires

May 19, 2016 16:18 ET (20:18 GMT)

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