The Sunday News
France and Egypt say no theory can be ruled out over the crash of EgyptAir flight MS804, amid a major international search for the plane, which is believed to have plunged into the Mediterranean on Thursday morning with 66 people on board.
“The information we have gathered confirms, alas, that this plane has crashed, and it has disappeared. We have a duty to know everything about the cause and what has happened,” the French president added. “No theory is ruled out and none is certain right now.
“When we have the truth we will draw our conclusions; whether this was an accident or something else, perhaps terrorist. We will have the truth,” said François Hollande at a press conference.
The Airbus A320 took off from Paris Charles de Gaulle airport at 11.09pm local time on Wednesday night, bound for Cairo. Contact was lost at about 2.30am Egypt local time.
The Greek defence minister, Panos Kammenos, said the plane made “sudden swerves” in mid-air and plunged before dropping off radars in the southern Mediterranean.
“The plane carried out a 90-degree turn to the left and a 360-degree turn to the right, falling from 37,000ft to 15,000ft, and the signal was lost at around 10,000ft,” Kammenos said.
A major search is under way in the eastern Mediterranean involving C-130 rescue aircraft and at least eight boats.
Egypt’s Prime Minister, Sherif Ismail, said terrorism was one possible explanation.
“We cannot exclude anything at this time or confirm anything. All the search operations must be concluded so we can know the cause,” Ismail said when asked if terrorism might be involved.
Greek authorities were investigating an account from the captain of a merchant ship who reported seeing a “flame in the sky” about 130 nautical miles south of the island of Karpathos. The plane was about 10 miles inside Egyptian airspace when it vanished.
The plane’s unexplained crash follows long-standing concerns about security at Egypt’s airports. Some 224 people were killed on 31 October last year after a bomb was smuggled on to a Russian passenger jet. The plane, which took off from the resort of Sharm el-Sheikh, was brought down over the Sinai Peninsula.
Britain warned Egyptian security officials about lax security at the airport back in 2014. Egypt initially denied any terrorist link. The Kremlin later said an explosive device was responsible and a local branch of the extremist group Islamic State claimed responsibility.
In recent years Egypt has faced a growing threat from Isis-affiliated groups, including Wilayat Sinai, based in the Sinai Peninsula. It has claimed several bombings and shootings in the Nile valley against a backdrop of state repression under the Egyptian president, Abdel-Fatah al-Sisi.
The plane that crashed on Thursday had made four previous flights in the preceding 24 hours, including visits to Asmara in Eritrea and Tunis in Tunisia. Its experienced captain – he had clocked up 6,275 flying hours, according to EgyptAir – did not send a distress signal.
Those on board included 56 passengers and 10 crew, including three security guards. There were 30 Egyptians, 15 French nationals, two Iraqis and one person each from the UK, Belgium, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, Sudan, Chad, Portugal, Algeria and Canada. At least two babies and one child were on board, the airline said.
The head of Greece’s air traffic control board, Serafeim Petrou, said it was a “fact the plane had crashed”, adding: “Most probably, and very unfortunately, it is at the bottom of the sea.”
Petrou said tracing the cause and retrieving wreckage would therefore take time.
“Nothing can be excluded. An explosion could be a possibility but, then, so could damage to the fuselage,” he said.
France’s Prime Minister, Manuel Valls, offered to send planes and boats to help locate the aircraft. He also said that “no theory can be ruled out” in investigating its disappearance.
Jean-Paul Troadec, the former president of the French air investigation bureau, told Europe 1:
“We can make certain hypotheses. There’s a strong possibility of an explosion on board from a bomb or a suicide bomber. The idea of a technical accident when weather conditions were good seems possible but also not that likely.”
Another possibility, he suggested, was that the plane might have been shot down – the fate of Malaysian Airlines MH17, downed in July 2014 above rebel-held eastern Ukraine by a sophisticated Russian surface-to-air missile.
“If the crew didn’t send an alert signal, it’s because what happened was very sudden,” Troadec said.
Relatives of some of the passengers were gathering at Cairo’s international airport.
“There’s no information inside. They’re not telling us anything for sure,” said one young woman who did not disclose her name. She said she had come to the arrival hall in the hope of hearing news of her friend Samar, one of the 30 Egyptian passengers on board the missing flight.
The UK foreign secretary, Philip Hammond, confirmed that a British passport holder was on board, and the Foreign Office in London said it was working closely with the Egyptian and French authorities.
An EgyptAir plane was hijacked and diverted to Cyprus in March. A man who admitted to the hijacking and is described by Cypriot authorities as “psychologically unstable” is in custody in Cyprus. – Guardian
