Brother of missing man Robert Kincaid flying to Paris to search for him

The family of a Belfast man are travelling to France to search for him after he disappeared from an airport in Paris.

Robert Kincaid, 38, was due to get a connecting flight to Dublin from Charles de Gaulle airport on Thursday 17 July, after working on an oil rig in Benin, west Africa.

The last time Robert spoke to his family was after he missed his flight that evening – behaviour which his father says is “out of character”.

A Foreign and Commonwealth Office spokesperson told BBC News NI they are “supporting the family of a British man who is missing in France”.

“He was just an ordinary big lad just wanting to come home. He was a happy-go-larry fella and then all of a sudden all this happened,” his father Robert Kincaid told BBC Radio Ulster’s Good Morning Ulster programme.

Mr Kincaid’s family tried to ring his phone again that evening but say it was answered by a man who they believe was speaking French.

The phone then became disconnected which his father said was very unusual as Robert would normally have been in contact with his mother or friends “every day without fail”.

“It’s terrible, his mother is in bits,” his father added.

“We’ve been on to the embassy, we’ve been on to the foreign office, we’ve been on to the police. We’ve contacted everybody to find out what is actually going on.

“Where did he go after he left the airport? We know he’s not in the airport, but we want to get the cameras to see where he went, or who he went with.

“So we’re in the process of doing that with the police, but that’ll probably take time.”

Mr Kincaid’s brother and a family friend are due to meet a representative from the British Embassy in Paris who will help them speak to French authorities.

The pair also have leaflets and t-shirts printed out with his image on them to help raise awareness.

A Foreign Office spokesperson told BBC News NI they are supporting the family and “are in contact with the local authorities”.

His father told BBC News NI that Robert’s disappearance is “totally out of character” and the family are living in a “nightmare”.

“So if we can get this out to everybody to see, even one person maybe knows or has seen him, I’d be grateful.”

“Just thinking what is going on or what’s happening. It’s not knowing is the whole thing with the family,” he added.

“At the start we thought maybe Robert had had a few pints in the airport and that’s why he missed his flight but now we’re starting to think differently, has someone lifted his phone? Has he left it down somewhere? We don’t know, it’s just a mystery,” he added.

He says something has gone “wrong somewhere down the line and we need to find out”.