At Cairo airport, an agonizing wait for news about EgyptAir Flight 804

Some of them were there from the start, waiting to meet their friends or family at Cairo International Airport’s Terminal 3, where EgyptAir Flight 804 was scheduled to arrive at 3:05 a.m. local time. Some were still at home, asleep, expecting their loved ones to be there when they woke up.

Over the course of the morning, they got the news one by one -- the plane had disappeared. Then they waited, in painful uncertainty, for something more, without receiving any clear answers.

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At the airport, around 4 a.m., everyone waiting for Flight 804 was taken to a building set apart from the rest of the airport, normally used for the airline’s catering services and operations. As others arrived at the terminal, expecting to pick someone up, they were ushered onto buses and taken to the area where the rest of the families were waiting.

Others trickled in slowly, awakened by phone calls telling them to come down to the airport. They arrived with confusion in their eyes, asking the crowd of journalists assembled outside the in-flight services building if they knew what was going on.

“Please tell me this plane did not crash,” one woman could be heard saying on her cellphone as she was ushered inside.

EgyptAir did not explicitly say there had been a crash, and some arrived hopeful that the plane would be found.

Inside the hall, they were given water and juice, and treated with kindness by airline staff, one man said as he was leaving the hall, not wanting to wait for the press conference the airline said would be held at noon. Airline personnel escorted them in and out. But they were given little information.

A woman emerged, sobbing, with her husband. She said that her son-in-law was one of the security personnel on board the plane. “We don’t know anything. We don’t understand. We don’t know what happened to the plane,” she said.

Another woman collapsed, overwhelmed with grief, as she was leaving with her family, and her daughter caught her and held her tightly.

Everyone coming out of the building said they were not given any definitive answers about what happened. They were not told directly that the plane had crashed.

But some came to the conclusion on their own. “My brother just died, and you are photographing us?” one woman shouted at journalists gathered outside.

Hassan is a special correspondent.