https://googledrive.com/host/0B38RRn4Hb02OekJ0SmNQVlUyU3c
The Aviation Herald states they “received information from three independent channels”, that ACARS (Aircraft Communications Addressing and Reporting System) received the following messages from the aircraft:
00:26Z 3044 ANTI ICE R WINDOW
00:26Z 561200 R SLIDING WINDOW SENSOR
00:26Z 2600 SMOKE LAVATORY SMOKE
00:27Z 2600 AVIONICS SMOKE
00:28Z 561100 R FIXED WINDOW SENSOR
00:29Z 2200 AUTO FLT FCU 2 FAULT
00:29Z 2700 F/CTL SEC 3 FAULT
The timestamps refer to GMT and point to the alerts being received in the minutes before the flight dropped off radar screens.
NBC News says that US intelligence sources have confirmed they are aware of the reports that smoke alerts were issued from a bathroom near the cockpit on board EgyptAir flight 804 and that “they have no reason to believe the information is not accurate”.
Aviation expert David Learmount told Fox News that if the reports were correct, it was possible that a fire had started in the plane’s avionics compartment, which could point to an electrical fire bringing down the flight.
Updated
CNN are reporting there were smoke alerts on board EgyptAir Flight 804 in the minutes before it crashed.
They cite an Egyptian source who showed them a screen grab of data from the Aircraft Communications Addressing and Reporting System (ACARS).
Updated
Summary
The Egyptian military has said it found debris of EgyptAir flight MS804, which disappeared early on Thursday morning, flying from Paris to Cairo with 66 people on board.
- Marine forces discovered “debris, passengers’ belongings, body parts, luggage, and aircraft seats”, Egyptian and Greek authorities said. The debris was found about 180 miles north of Alexandria, and the search area has, for now, a 40-mile radius.
- Greek defence minister Panos Kammenos said more material had been spotted in the area but that it has not been confirmed as belonging to flght MS804.
- There is still no sign of bulk wreckage or the “black box” flight recorders, though a European satellite spotted a 1.2-mile-long oil slick about 25 miles from the airplane’s last known location. In this part of the Mediterranean, south of Crete, the water is 8,000 to 10,000 feet deep, though some trenches descend even farther. The US, France, Greece, Italy, Cyprus and Britain have joined the search.
- Officials largely suspect terrorism but still have scant evidence to make any strong case about what brought the plane down. Though 36 hours have passed since the plane disappeared, no terrorist group has claimed responsibility for the crash, in contrast to a quick claim by Isis after a Russian plane exploded over Egypt in November.
- The plane vanished from radar at 2.29.am local time Thursday morning, according to Greek air traffic controllers, only 40 seconds after it left Greek airspace and entered Egyptian space over the Mediterranean.
- Two minutes earlier, Greek controllers tried and failed to contact the pilots as they passed control and communications to their Egyptian counterparts. Attempts to contact on emergency channels also failed, and neither Cairo nor Athens heard a distress signal.
- Kammenos said the plane made several violent “swerves” right before it disappeared, including a 90-degree turn to the left, a plunge from 37,000ft to 15,000ft, and a then a 360-spin.
- The plane was flying normally and its pilots in good cheer at 1.48am Cairo time, according to the Greek traffic controllers who spoke with them.
- Egyptians mourned for the crew and passengers, including three children, all presumed killed in the crash. “Grief is camped over this village.”
- Confusion has marred the investigation so far. EgyptAir claimed to have found wreckage of MS804 on Thursday afternoon, citing the Egyptian foreign ministry. That account was disputed by Greek authorities, and eventually the airline’s vice-president retracted the claim: no wreckage had been found by Thursday’s end.
Ahmed Abu Zeid, the spokesman for Egypt’s foreign ministry, has taken issue with the speculation on CNN about what could have possibly brought down EgyptAir flight MS804.
It’s disrespectful that @CNN insinuates pilot suicide in #EgyptairMS804 tragedy while families are mourning.
— Egypt MFA Spokesman (@MfaEgypt) May 20, 2016
There remains virtually no evidence about what happened to the airplane. Egyptian and western authorities have said terrorism is more likely than technical failure, but no group has claimed responsibility. The plane disappeared from radar without a distress signal, according to the Egyptian military, and Greek controllers failed to make contact on emergency channels in the minutes before it vanished.
After EgyptAir flight 990 crashed in the Atlantic in 1999, Egyptian authorities similarly pushed back against suggestions by American investigators that the plane’s Egyptian pilot deliberately caused the crash. Those competing claims were made at a much more advanced stage of investigation than the current state of the MS804 inquiry.
Cities, villages and mosques around Egypt are mourning, my colleague Emma Graham-Harrison reports, from Heba Mafouz and Mit Badr Halawa, a village closely tied to France through decades of immigration.
“Grief is camped over this village,” says farmer Hassan El-Ashry. This sleepy settlement on the banks of the Nile has been virtually silenced by the devastating and disproportionate scale of its losses in the crash of EgyptAir flight MS804.
A father, his 18-month-old daughter and two other locals whose families lived just a few streets away from each other have all been lost in the Mediterranean, four of the disaster’s 30 Egyptian victims.
“I knew, when that plane had gone down, that people from the village would be on it,” says Mohamed Shadad, a professor of neurosurgery and cousin of two victims. “I often took that flight myself when I was studying in Europe, and there was always someone I knew on it.
“Then, two hours later my brother called and said ‘Haitham was on that plane, and Donia [his 18-month-old daughter] was with him’.” A second brother, Hassan, was given the news in even more brutal form, logging on to Facebook to see his cousin’s face pop up beside news of the crash.
The other victims were neighbour Khalid Allam, in his 40s, and 32-year-old Khalid Tantawi, who had been on holiday. “Our friend was teasing him, saying: ‘why are you always running around? You should save your money’. He said ‘I want to see the world before I die,’” Hassan says.
“This is not a rich or developed village, and they were coming to help with giving alms before Ramadan,” says Magdy Atteya, a 47-year-old secretary who, like most of the men in the village, has spent time in France.
Writ large in the back streets of this small, stricken town is a wider truth about the problems which the plane crash pose for Egypt, a country already battered by instability and the collapse of its vital tourist industry.
“Someone is targeting Egypt’s image and stability, they want to destabilise it, turn it into another Syria,” says Mustapha Eissa, 30, another France-based local back for the holidays.
“I am meant to be going home in 15 days but I am really scared to leave. I will probably postpone my flights until I feel more comfortable.”
All the men killed in the crash left behind children, and were also supporting parents and other members of their families, in a country where unemployment is chronic and salaries are often low.
A construction worker, Haitham is survived by his Moroccan wife and older daughter, who had just started school. They were planning to fly out to join him a few days later.
And so, for his mother, the grief prompted by his death comes with fear of further loss, of her surviving granddaughter, stranded in France beyond the reach of an Egyptian relative too elderly to qualify for a visa.
“The family is divided, and she is so frightened she will not be able to see Haneen again,” says Mohamed. Haitham’s uncle, a burly engineer, is leading the mourning but at the mention of the lost girl his shoulders sag and his eyes cloud with tears. “It’s going to take time, especially as we have lost a little girl.”
None of the passengers or crew on flight MS804 were on a watch list of suspicious people, the AP reports, citing unnamed officials European and US agencies.
The lists are often used by both European and American security and law enforcement agencies, said the officials who spoke Friday on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak about the ongoing investigation.
The AP also spoke with Philip Baum, editor of Aviation Security International, who described possible reasons the plane may have crashed.
The swerving of the aircraft suggests some kind of struggle inside the cockpit, said
He said the pilots could have been trying to control an aircraft disabled by an explosion, like in 1976 when two bombs exploded on a Cuban passenger plane after takeoff from Barbados and the pilot tried to steer the aircraft away from a beach.
Or they could have been struggling with someone trying to take control of the plane.
“It could have been a fight in the flight deck between crew members, one suicidal and one not. Or a hijacker trying to gain access,” Baum said.
The Egyptian military has said no distress call was received from the cockpit. “The last thing you are thinking about when you are struggling is to send out a distress signal,” Baum said. “The first thing you think about is trying to regain control of the aircraft.”
The possibility that the plane was struck by a missile or drone was more remote, aviation expert Philip Butterworth-Hayes told the AP. He added that he found it difficult to imagine that a technical mishap caused the crash.
“I can’t think of a technical fault. Because you have three flight control systems,” he said. “And even if they all fail a pilot can still fly the aircraft, they can keep it straight and level.”
Security at French airports has fallen under scrutiny in the last two days, my colleague Kim Willsher reports from Paris, whose Charles de Gaulle airport was the last place that flight MS804 left before it crashed in the Mediterranean.
Gérard Arnoux, an aeronautical expert, told Libération: “I can state that it would be possible for a person to introduce a bomb in a plane at Roissy. Staff are regularly checked, but airports aren’t fortified places surveilled by huge equipment like thermic cameras, which means anyone could throw a package over a fence.”
Sébastien Caron, the director general of ASCT International, an air safety consultancy, agreed: “A baggage handler could very well, once the bag has been checked, add a booby-trapped case to the hold.”
However, another air security expert, Xavier Tytelman, said he thought it unlikely that a bomb could have been planted on the plane at the French airport, which he said had some of the “highest security measures in the world”.
Security throughout France’s transport system has been tightened since November’s terrorist attacks on the French capital and the imposition of a state of emergency.
The appointment of security staff working in sensitive positions in public industries is overseen by the Conseil National des Activités Privées de Sécurité (CNAPS). Airport staff are among the most strictly controlled. There are about 5,000 security agents at Paris airports, of whom 264 are employed by the airport directly and others by security companies. Anyone working in a “reserved” area has to have police approval to obtain a “red access badge”.
Shortly after the November attacks, it was revealed that 70 workers at Roissy/Charles de Gaulle and Orly airports in Paris had been stripped of their security badges because of “worrying behaviour”. Two security guards at Orly airport are suing their employer, Securitas, for alleged discrimination.
Under the state of emergency, officials opened 4,000 airport staff lockers. About 10,000 people in France are on the S-list, a security register, most of them alleged religious extremists.
Dounia Bouzar, the founder of the Centre for the Prevention of Sectarianism related to Islam, told the Guardian that employers were making a mistake singling out Muslim workers with beards who observed prayer times.
“France has been behind in this for a long time,” he said. “We’ve been researching this for a decade and I can state that it’s not religious behaviour or appearance that should be setting off alarms, but someone whose social and relational behaviour suddenly changes.
Though terrorism has been widely suggested as a likely cause for flight MS804’s crash, after more than 36 hours no group has claimed responsibility and experts are weighing possible other causes. My colleague Gwyn Topham has examined several of the possibilities.
A bomb
A terrorist motive is highly plausible, given recent attacks in France and the downing in Egyptian airspace of the Russian Metrojet airliner crash last year that killed 224 people. Russia declared in mid-November it had found sufficient evidence of an improvised explosive having caused that disaster.
Security experts fear that airport staff with access to sensitive areas pose as much of an inside threat in major European hubs such as Paris’s Charles de Gaulle as in north African airports.
The EgyptAir plane should have been searched repeatedly on its last 24-hour itinerary via Cairo, Eritrea and Tunisia. But French ministers acknowledged that a bomb could have been smuggled aboard at Charles de Gaulle, despite heightened security measures, and any lapse would be a serious blow to passenger confidence in air travel.
Some experts have said the final movements of the plane – a 90-degree turn to the left followed by a 360-degree rightwards turn, according to data from Greek military radar – could indicate a plane out of control after an explosion, although others have cautioned against reading too much into the movements.
A missile
Jean-Paul Troadec, the former president of France’s air accident investigation bureau, said a missile was a possibility.
Egyptian military says debris from plane found in Mediterranean, after EgyptAir rowed back on announcement that wreckage had been spottedRead more
Although the EgyptAir flight was not flying over a war zone, the shooting down offlight MH17 from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur in 2014 demonstrated the vulnerability of passenger airliners, even at 33,000 feet (10,058 metres) high.
While Nato military exercises have been conducted with aircraft carriers and jets in the eastern Mediterranean, potential jihadi terrorists are not believed to have weapons with sufficient range, even over land, and the EgyptAir flight was at an altitude of 37,000 feet.
A cockpit struggle or sabotage
The swerving of the plane could suggest a struggle for control, perhaps in a hijack situation or even between crew members.
After 9/11, hijackers have had a harder task to reach the flight deck since locked doors were introduced – but the locks have made it easier for a pilot or an intruder to sabotage a flight.
The lack of a mayday or a response to air traffic control requests for a 12-minute period before the plane spiralled down will be a question for investigators.
The pilot of flight MS804, Mohamed Said Shoukair, had more than 6,000 flying hours, while the co-pilot, Mohamed Mamdouh Ahmed, had almost 3,000.
Since the disappearance of flight MH370, pilots have been under suspicion – and the deliberate crashing of a Germanwings plane by its co-pilot in 2015 has demonstrated the terrible possibilities, which airline bosses at Lufthansa admitted they could take no real measures to avert. International investigations into the 1999 EgyptAir disaster concluded that the co-pilot of flight 990 from LA to Cairo deliberately crashed the plane into the Atlantic, although Egypt rejected the findings.
Mechanical failure
Industry wisdom is that the chances of anything suddenly going wrong on a modern plane are extremely slim: the A320 is the workhorse of short-haul aviation and an Airbus mantra is that one such model takes off or lands somewhere in the world every two seconds. At cruising altitude in good weather, the probabilities are even more remote.
A combination of events
The increasing sophistication of planes has in some circumstances left pilots even more susceptible when things go wrong: when readings have not tallied or the controls don’t function as they should.
Only 18 months ago, an Indonesia AirAsia Airbus A320 crashed in the Java Sea after stalling during an abnormally steep climb. Investigators found that a malfunction in rudder controls and an automated warning triggered a chain of events that saw the pilots mishandle the plane.
A similar combination of abnormal readings, warnings and overreaction by disoriented pilots was found to be behind the Air France 447 disaster.
Tony Cable, a former AAIB investigator, worked on A320 incidents and said: “With electrical system problems, you get absolute mayhem in the cockpit with all sorts of messages and cockpits and alarms and it can be difficult for the crew to work out what’s going on. The action you can take is to flick a switch to reset the controls.
“But in some cases the crew haven’t operated this, and in my view they have got quite close to catastrophe – if it was at night they could have turned out badly.”
Reports have emerged that one of the crew members on flight MS804 had posted pictures of a cabin attendant in front of a crashed airplane – the Guardian has been unable to verify the authenticity of the image, which was published by the Daily Mail. My colleague Gwyn Topham has written a short post following the unconfirmed report.
Security experts expressed alarm after it emerged that a cabin crew member from the doomed EgyptAir flight MS804 had posted pictures on Facebook of a cabin attendant in front of an aeroplane that had crashed into the sea.
Samar Ezz Eldin, 27, uploaded the digitally manipulated picture in September 2014, four months after she started work at EgyptAir.
The image shows an attendant emerging in wet clothes from the sea, pulling a small suitcase, as an aeroplane is either plunging or part submerged into the water on the horizon.
Eldin, a former student of modern languages at the Ain Shams University in Cairo, was one of the first of the victims of the crash to be named.
Philip Baum, aithor of Violence in the Skies, a history of aircraft hijacking and bombing, said he found it amazing that such a photo could be shared on social media by an airline crew member.
He said that while such an image would alert investigators to possibly question any crew member’s mental state, it would also raise wider questions about protocols at the airline if it was posted on Facebook. “This was nearly two years ago – it is astonishing that none of her colleagues would have seen it and reported it in that time.”
Baum said while any explanation for the disaster would have to wait for the wreckage and flight recorders to be examined, the movement of the plane looks to tally most with a possible incident onboard or struggle.
An EgyptAir flight was hijacked in March, while a co-pilot caused the most recent Airbus A320 crash, when a Germanwings plane was flown into the Alps in March 2015.
Updated
The BBC’s Richard Westcott has learned about an emergency landing at Cairo nearly three years ago by the plane registered as MS804 – and sparked a conversation about the many emergency landings that airplanes make.
Not sure it’s relevant, but SU-GCC did make an emergency landing at Cairo airport on June 25th 2013 #EgyptAir #MS804
— Richard Westcott (@BBCwestcott) May 20, 2016
It was flying to Istanbul when the pilot noticed that the No1 engine was overheating, as he was climbing to 24,000 feet. #EgyptAir #MS804
— Richard Westcott (@BBCwestcott) May 20, 2016
The report says a technical defect was found in the engine and repaired. #EgyptAir #MS804
— Richard Westcott (@BBCwestcott) May 20, 2016
@sommervillebbc Quentin: for what reason? That makes a huge diff. You do know how many ’emergency landings’ there are daily? (cc @Toryscott)
— Jordan Dias (@jordandias) May 20, 2016
@jordandias @sommervillebbc As Jordan says, there are emergency landings all of the time, mostly for medical emergencies or minor tech probs
— Victoria Scott (@Toryscott) May 20, 2016
Summary
The Egyptian military has said it found debris of EgyptAir flight MS804, which disappeared early on Thursday morning, flying from Paris to Cairo with 66 people on board.
- Marine forces discovered “debris, passengers’ belongings, body parts, luggage, and aircraft seats”, Egyptian and Greek authorities said. The debris was found about 180 miles north of Alexandria, and the search area has, for now, a 40-mile radius.
- Greek defence minister Panos Kammenos said more material had been spotted in the area but that it has not been confirmed as belonging to flght MS804.
- There is still no sign of bulk wreckage or the “black box” flight recorders, though a European satellite spotted a 1.2-mile-long oil slick about 25 miles from the airplane’s last known location. In this part of the Mediterranean, south of Crete, the water is 8,000 to 10,000 feet deep, though some trenches descend even farther. The US, France, Greece, Italy, Cyprus and Britain have joined the search.
- The plane vanished from radar at 2.29.am local time Thursday morning, according to Greek air traffic controllers, only 40 seconds after it left Greek airspace and entered Egyptian space over the Mediterranean.
- Two minutes earlier, Greek controllers tried and failed to contact the pilots as they passed control and communications to their Egyptian counterparts. Attempts to contact on emergency channels also failed, and neither Cairo nor Athens heard a distress signal.
- Kammenos said the plane made several violent “swerves” right before it disappeared, including a 90-degree turn to the left, a plunge from 37,000ft to 15,000ft, and a then a 360-spin.
- The plane was flying normally and its pilots in good cheer at 1.48am Cairo time, according to the Greek traffic controllers who spoke with them.
- Confusion has marred the investigation so far. EgyptAir claimed to have found wreckage of MS804 on Thursday afternoon, citing the Egyptian foreign ministry. That account was disputed by Greek authorities, and eventually the airline’s vice-president retracted the claim: no wreckage had been found by Thursday’s end.
- Officials largely suspect terrorism but still have scant evidence to make any strong case about what brought the plane down. Though 36 hours have passed since the plane disappeared, no terrorist group has claimed responsibility for the crash, in contrast to a quick claim by Isis after a Russian plane exploded over Egypt in November.
Updated
There’s still no sign of bulk wreckage or a location signal from the “black box” flight records, Reuters reports on the continuing search for debris of flight MS804.
The search zone is currently 40 miles, about 180 miles north of Alexandria, with an area of 5,000 square miles that could be expanded if necessary. The European Space Agency said one of its satellites spotted a two-mile-long oil slick about 25 miles south-east of the airplane’s last known location.
It has been 36 hours since MS804 disappeared from radar, and no group has claimed responsibility for downing the plane. In contrast, in October Isis claimed responsibility for destroying a Russian airliner, and Russian authorities blamed a bomb. Reuters heard more detail from US and EgyptAir sources:
Officials from a number of US agencies told Reuters that a US review of satellite imagery so far had not produced any signs of an explosion. They said the United States had not ruled out any possible causes for the crash, including mechanical failure, terrorism or a deliberate act by the pilot or crew.
Khaled al-Gameel, head of crew at EgyptAir, said the pilot, Mahamed Saeed Ali Shouqair, had 15 years’ experience and was in charge of training and mentoring younger pilots.
“He comes from a pilot family; his uncle was a high-ranking pilot at EgyptAir and his cousin is also a pilot,” Gameel said. “He was very popular and was known for taking it upon himself to settle disputes any two colleagues were having.”
A Facebook page that appeared to be Shouqair’s showed no signs of Islamist sympathies. It included criticism of the Muslim Brotherhood, repostings of articles supporting President Sisi and pictures of Shouqair wearing aviator sunglasses.
The Associated Press adds that MS804 never issued a distress signal, and that Greek air-traffic controllers were unable to contact the cockpit, even on an emergency channel, right before the plane disappeared. AP has more on the search:
Experts said answers will come only with examination of the wreckage and the plane’s black box recorders. But retrieving them may take time. The water is 8,000 to 10,000 feet deep in the area where the jetliner is thought to have gone down, roughly halfway between Egypt’s coastal city of Alexandria and the Greek island of Crete.
France, Greece, Italy, Cyprus and Britain have joined the search, which encompasses a wide area south of Crete. Investigators from Egypt, France and Britain as well from Airbus will examine everything found in the search, Egyptian officials said.
Like Reuters, AP has heard from experts who are puzzled by the silence from terror groups that usually broadcast their role in tragedies.
Shiraz Maher at the International Center for the Study of Radicalisation in London said Isis released a 20-minute video on Thursday about its plans to conquer India.
“If they had been involved in the crash,” he told AP, “it would be very odd for them to have sent that video rather than boasting of the crash.”
Updated
Sixty-six people were on board EgyptAar MS804 when it disappeared from radar early Thursday morning, including 56 passengers and 10 crew. My colleague Patrick Greenfield has found details about some of the passengers identified so far.
Abdelrahman El Suhail, Kuwait An economics professor from Kuwait, he was travelling to a conference in Cairo, according to the Wall Street Journal.
Marwa Hamdy, Canada An IBM project manager and mother of three children aged 11 to 16, she was from Saskatoon but lived and worked in Cairo. She was described by a friend as a “kindhearted and very loving person”.
Ahmed Helal, 40, France A plant manager for Procter & Gamble in Amiens in France, father to a teenage daughter and a young son. He was travelling to visit his sick father in Egypt, according to the company.
Pierre Heslouin, 75, and Quentin Heslouin 41, France The father and son were travelling to Egypt for a holiday after the death of Edith Heslouin, Pierre’s wife and Quentin’s mother, Le Figaro reported.
Pascal Hess, 51, France A photographer from Normandy, he was travelling to the Red Sea for a 10-day holiday and almost did not catch the flight after losing his passport, according to friends.
Sahar Khoja, Saudi Arabia Worked at the Saudi embassy in Cairo and was travelling on the EgyptAir flight with her daughter, according to al-Arabiya.
Seitchi Mahamat, Chad A cadet at the French military academy Saint-Cyr Coëtquidan, he was travelling home to Chad after the death of his mother.
Richard Osman, 40, UK A geologist from Carmarthen in Wales, he was travelling to Egypt for work, his brother said. Osman’s wife, Aurelie, recently gave birth. Osman worked for a gold mining company based in Alexandria and was a frequent traveller to Egypt.
Geert Supre, 56, Belgium A logistics manager for the shipping company Vanguard Logistics Services in Antwerp, father of three children and a keen gardener. His eldest son, Charles, 25, told local media that his father was his role model and had a “very strong bond” with all his family.
Pilots
Mohamed Said Shoukair, 36, Egypt The pilot had 6,275 flying hours, including 2,101 with the Airbus A320 model, and had been promoted four days before the crash, according to the Daily Mail. Shoukair was described as a “well trained, highly disciplined captain” by the vice-president of EgyptAir, Ahmed Adel.
Mohamed Mamdouh Assem, 24, Egypt Becoming a pilot was a lifelong dream for Assem, according to a friend who spoke to the Daily Beast. The first officer had 2,766 flying hours and lived in Cairo.
Crew
Mervat Zakaria, Egypt The cabin manager for the EgyptAir flight was a former television actress and, according to reports, was married with one daughter.
Samar Ezz Eldin, 27 The flight attendant had been with the Egyptian airline for two years and recently got married.
Updated
EgyptAir has now put out a statement, reiterating that of the aviation ministry:
It reads: “Egyptian military and marine forces have discovered more debris, passengers’ belongings, body parts, luggage, and aircraft seats. Search is still in progress.”
Separately, Reuters has word from the chairman of EgyptAir, Safwat Moslem, who told Egyptian state television on Friday that the radius of the current search area was 40 miles (64km) but would be expanded as necessary.
صرح مصدر مسئول بشركة مصر للطيران أن القوات المسلحة والبحرية المصرية تمكنت من انتشال المزيد من حطام الطائرة. /١
— EGYPTAIR (@EGYPTAIR) May 20, 2016
Updated
Egypt: more remains and debris found
Egypt’s Civil Aviation Authority has quoted an unnamed official from EgyptAir as saying that the military have retrieved “more plane wreckage, including some of the passengers’ belongings, body parts, luggage, and plane seats”, the AP reports.
The airline and ministry have yet to make an English statement. Greek authorities had said more debris was spotted in the waters where remains, luggage and seats were found earlier on Friday, about 180 miles north of Alexandria.
Latest Aviation Ministry statement says additional wreckage found by Egyptian military at crash site, including body parts, seats, & luggage
— Alex Ortiz (@azortiz) May 20, 2016
Updated
EgyptAir says it has found more debris, according to the AP – more details should be forthcoming shortly.
BREAKING: EgyptAir official says more wreckage of the missing plane found, including body parts, luggage and passengers’ seats.
— The Associated Press (@AP) May 20, 2016
The US has offered assistance to the search for MS804 and the investigation into its assumed crash, but it’s not clear whether Egypt, France or Greece have accepted any aid besides a navy aircraft looking for debris.
Egypt in particular may resist American overtures to help find out what happened to the flight: after EgyptAir flight 990 crashed off Massachusetts in 1999, killing 217 people, the joint US-Egyptian investigation was tainted by mutual mistrust and a lack of cooperation. The National Transportation Safety Board and the Egyptian Civil Aviation Authority ultimately came to two completely different conclusions: Washington blamed relief first officer Gameel al-Batouti, and Cairo blamed mechanical failure.
In 2001 the Atlantic took a long look at the competing investigations and the mystery of what happened to 100 Americans, 89 Egyptians, 22 Canadians and a handful of others that day.
The problem was that so many of the scenarios the Egyptians posited were patently absurd—stray missiles, ghost airplanes, strange weather, and the like. Yet that didn’t mean that everything they said was wrong. As long as Batouti’s motive could not be conclusively shown, the possibility remained that the dive of Flight 990 was unintentional, just as [Egyptian authorities] maintained. And in the background the Egyptians had some very smart engineers looking into the various theories.
In essence the Egyptians were making two intertwined arguments: first, that it was culturally impossible for Batouti to have done what the NTSB believed; second, that the NTSB lacked the cultural sensitivity to understand what was on the cockpit voice recorder.
The NTSB interpreter translated al-Batouti’s last words as “I put my fate in God’s hands,” while an Egyptian interpreter said his words were: “I rely on God.”
Meanwhile, the FBI had taken up a criminal investigation into al-Batouti.
Mostly through interviews with employees of the Pennsylvania Hotel, the FBI found that Batouti had a reputation for sexual impropriety—and not merely by the prudish standards of America. It was reported that on multiple occasions over the previous two years he had been suspected of exposing himself to teenage girls, masturbating in public, following female guests to their rooms, and listening at their doors. Some of the maids, it was said, were afraid of him, and the hotel security guards had once brought him in for questioning and a warning.
Apparently the hotel had considered banning him. The FBI learned that EgyptAir was aware of these problems and had warned Batouti to control his behavior. He was not considered to be a dangerous man—and certainly he was more sad than bad. In fact, there was a good side to Batouti that came out in these interviews as well. He was very human. Many people were fond of him, even at the hotel.
The two-day investigation into EgyptAir MS804 has already seen trouble, with conflicting claims on Thursday by Egyptian and Greek authorities about wreckage found off the island of Karpathos, east of Crete. That debris was eventually ruled out, but not after EgyptAir had said it was linked to the flight and informed the families of the passengers and crew.
Only a small number of the 66 passengers and crew have been named, though their nationalities have been listed by EgyptAir. My colleague Ashifa Kassam, in Toronto, reports on one of the two Canadians who was on board flight MS804.
Two Canadians were among the 66 passengers and crew on the EgyptAir flight, according to Canada’s foreign minister. EgyptAir has named one of the victims as Marwa Hamdy.
Friends described her as a fiercely intelligent businesswoman who doted on her three young sons, who range in age from 11 to 16. “She was very kindhearted, a very loving person,” close friend Haleh Banani told Canada’s National Post. “She was very intelligent, very well-read, always engaged in intellectual discussions, and outspoken.”
Hamdy was born and raised in Saskatoon, Canada, but later moved to Cairo with her family where she worked as a project manger for IBM Corp. She had been visiting family in Paris.
Banani said she had spoken to Hamdy’s eldest son on Thursday. “He’s keeping it together,” she said. “He told me he needed to be strong for his younger brothers. The youngest one doesn’t know.”
She described Hamdy as an attentive mother who was very involved with her children’s activities. “I asked her son: ‘How do you want people to remember her?’ He said, ‘As a kind loving woman, who helped a lot of people.’”
Updated
A European satellite has spotted a potential oil slick in the area of the eastern Mediterranean Sea where flight MS804 disappeared, the European Space Agency (ESA) said on Friday.
ESA released a statement:
The image was acquired by Sentinel-1A yesterday at 4pm GMT (18:00 CEST).
ESA has given information related to the image to the relevant authorities to support the search operations.
Since the plane disappeared, ESA and experts have been scrutinising satellite data to see if anything could be found to indicate wreckage or oil floating on the sea.
According to the satellite image, the slick was at 33°32’ N / 29°13’ E – about 40km southeast of the last known location of the aircraft. The slick is about 2km long.
There is, however, no guarantee that the slick is from the missing aircraft.
A second image from this morning at 4am GMT (06:00 CEST) shows that the slick has drifted by about 5km. The Sentinel-2A satellite will pass above the same area on 22 May, and experts will continue to study the images returned for further clues.
On Thursday US officials said that satellite imagery has so far shown no signs of an explosion, though they also cautioned that the investigation was in its early stages. The long and still futile search for Malaysia Airlines MH370 should similarly warn away too many conclusions from this report: investigators found several oil slicks and pieces of debris that were not ultimately associated with the missing plane.
Updated
If flight MS804 crashed about 180 miles north of Alexandria, near where the Egyptian military has found debris, it may be one of the more difficult regions of the Mediterranean to search.
At its deepest the Mediterranean is more than 17,000ft deep, though that is south-west of Greece in the Ionian Sea. The Levantine Sea, which surrounds Alexandria and the eastern Mediterranean, descends to more than 14,000ft in the Pliny Trench, about 50 miles south of Crete.
For comparison the search teams looking for Malaysia Airlines MH370 in the southern Indian Ocean were at times descending to 15,000ft.
#EgyptAir #MS804 wreckage may be on a quite deep part of the Mediterranean as displayed on our Nautical Charts pic.twitter.com/KHzyXtiyXZ
— MarineTraffic (@MarineTraffic) May 20, 2016
What we know
The Egyptian military claims it has found debris of EgyptAir flight MS804, which disappeared with 66 people on board early on Thursday morning, flying from Paris to Cairo.
- An Egyptian aircraft spotted debris, including two seats, items of luggage and a body part, about 180 miles north of the Alexandria, general Mohammed Samir and the Greek defence minister, Panos Kammenos, said. Samir said “there is no doubt” this debris belongs to the flight, though Kammenos cautioned that they have yet to officially confirm that other material spotted in the area belongs to MS804.
- The plane vanished from radar at 2.29.am local time, according to Greek air traffic controllers, only 40 seconds after it left Greek airspace and entered Egyptian space over the Mediterranean.
- Two minutes earlier, Greek controllers tried and failed to contact the plane as they passed control and communications to their Egyptian counterparts. Attempts to contact on emergency channels also failed.
- Kammenos said the plane made several violent “swerves” right before it disappeared, including a 90-degree turn to the left, a plunge from 37,000ft to 15,000ft, and a then a 360-spin.
- The plane was flying normally and its pilots in good cheer at 1.48am Cairo time, according to the Greek traffic controllers who spoke with them.
- Confusion has marred the investigation so far. EgyptAir claimed to have found wreckage of MS804 on Thursday afternoon, citing the Egyptian foreign ministry. That account was disputed by Greek authorities, and eventually the airline’s vice-president retracted the claim: no wreckage had been found by Thursday’s end.
- Officials largely suspect terrorism but still have scant evidence to make any strong case about what brought the plane down. No terrorist group has claimed responsibility for the crash, in contrast to the quick claim by Islamic State after a Russian plane crashed over Egypt in November.
Updated
Search teams face a daunting task to recover pieces of debris – though perhaps not as daunting as the search for Malaysia Airlines MH370, which disappeared over one of the deepest, most remote and stormiest oceans in the world.
The BBC’s transport correspondent tweets about the obstacles. NB: Air France flight 447 crashed in the Atlantic Ocean, en route from Brazil to France, and the Mediterranean for all its challenges is a more shallow sea than the Indian or Atlantic oceans.
Oceanographer tells me v hard bit of ocean to search. Either mountains as big as Alps or 2 mile deep plain #EgyptAir #MS804
— Richard Westcott (@BBCwestcott) May 20, 2016
#EgyptAir #MS804 remember, took 2 years to find Air France 447 black boxes. Pingers can come off or not work…
— Richard Westcott (@BBCwestcott) May 20, 2016
Kammenos said: “A few hours earlier we were informed [by Egyptian authorities] that a body part, two seats and one or more items of luggage where found in the search area.”
He said other aircraft participating in the search had “allegedly reported more findings in another area, but currently we have no official confirmation that they belong to the plane in question.”
The Greek defence minister, Panos Kammenos, said Egyptian authorities have said they have spotted a body part, two seats and suitcases in search for the EgyptAir plane.
Kammenos said that Greek military bases on Crete would be made available for allied forces carrying out the search mission.
He said data clearly shows the aircraft took sharp turns and plunged, but analysis is for experts to determine.
He also said the plane had taken a normal course through Greek airspace and had not deviated, according to Reuters.
Updated
Mike Vivian, former head of operations at the UK’s Civil Aviation Authority, told the BBC he thought the plane’s sudden swerves before dropping off radar were more likely to be caused by human interference than by a bomb.
“It looks highly unlikely that this was consistent with some sort of explosive device,” he said. “One’s inclined to go towards the theory that there had been some interference in the aircraft and on the flight deck, with the control of the aircraft.”
In this video, Alastair Osman says his brother Richard, the only Briton on the EgyptAir flight MS804, was a “kind and loving” father-of-two.
Updated
Greece’s lead air accident investigator Athanasios Binis has told the Guardian that an investigation into the causes of the crash can only commence properly when the plane’s black boxes are found.
Binis, who last night dispelled earlier reports that debris had been discovered off the island of Crete, said unofficially Greek authorities had received information that wreckage had been found ten miles “from the last known point of the plane.”
“The most important thing is that the plane’s two black boxes are found,” he said. “If the cockpit flight recorder and flight data recorder are found, along with wreckage, then a real investigation can begin.”
Binis clarified that the south eastern Aegean island of Karpathos, referred to earlier as the site of the crash, had been “used as a point of reference.” “We were looking in an area 130 miles south of Karpathos which was used as a point of reference,” he added.
Whatever caused the crash, investigators had ruled out meteorological conditions.
“There are three reasons for a plane [to go down],” he said. “Meteorological, technical and human. The first has now been ruled out because the weather was quite good. Whether a technical factor or human factor, either inside or outside the plane, is to blame remains to be seen. All possibilities are open.”
Updated
In Britain, Carmarthen MP Jonathan Edwards said people are shocked by the news Briton Richard Osman was a victim of the EgyptAir crash. He told ITV:
The community is stunned that someone from Carmarthenshire has been killed in this terrorist atrocity.
Our thoughts and sympathies are with his family – especially considering that Mr Osman was a new father.
I’m sure the authorities will be urgently investigating how an explosive device has been delivered onto a plane from one of Europe’s busiest airports.
The cause of the crash has not yet been ascertained.
Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi has expressed his condolences to the families of the victims. “The presidency with utmost sadness and regret mourns the victims on board the EgyptAir flight who were killed after the plane crashed in the Mediterranean on its way back to Cairo from Paris,” Sisi’s office said in a statement.
Updated
BBC transport correspondent Richard Westcott points out that there was a 50-minute gap between the plane’s final communication with Greek air traffic control (at 02:48 local time) and its disappearance from radar.
Greek ATC timeline. #EgyptAir #MS804 02:48 speak to pilot, all ok. 03:27 repeated calls unanswered. 03:39 lose signal. Quite a gap there.
— Richard Westcott (@BBCwestcott) May 20, 2016
Times journalist Anthee Carassava says the Greek MoD has confirmed the discovery of bodies, debris and baggage
GReek MoD confirms bodies, #MS804 plane parts and backages found 5 miles south of spot where #EgyptAir flight went off radar
— Anthee Carassava (@antheecarassava) May 20, 2016
Egyptian airport officials have told the Associated Press that investigators will inspect the plane debris and personal belongings that the Egyptian army says it has found.
The officials said the chief Egyptian investigator Ayman el-Mokadam will be joined by French and British investigators as well as an expert from AirBus.
EgyptAir says it has confirmed that debris and personal belongings have been found off the coast of Alexandria. The airline also tweeted condolences to the families of the victims.
هذا وتنعي مصرللطيران أسر ضحايا الطائرة وتعرب عن بالغ اسفها لهذا الحادث الأليم. #MS804
— EGYPTAIR (@EGYPTAIR) May 20, 2016
Updated
Egyptian military says parts of debris found in sea
The Egyptian military has said it has found parts of debris from the missing plane 290 kilometres north of the Mediterranean coastal city of Alexandria, Reuters is reporting.
The navy also found some of the passengers’ belongings and is sweeping the area looking for the plane’s black box, the military said in a statement.
Updated
According to Egyptian airport officials, three French and three British investigators and an AirBus technical expert have arrived in Cairo to join the investigation into what caused the plane to crash.
France’s foreign minister Jean-Marc Ayrault said on France-2 television that there is “absolutely no indication” of the cause.
The country’s junior minister for transport, Alain Vidalies, said on France-Info radio that “no theory is favoured” at this stage and urged “the greatest caution.”
A French military Falcon jet is helping in the search for debris, and Vidalies said France could also offer undersea search equipment and experts.
He defended security at Charles de Gaulle Airport, saying staff badges are revoked if there is the slightest security doubt.
Opening summary
A second day of search efforts is under way in the Mediterranean for debris from the EgyptAir jet that swerved abruptly and disappeared from radar while carrying 66 people from Paris to Cairo at 2.30am local time (04.30 GMT) on Thursday morning.
Here is a summary of what we now know so far.
- EgyptAir has rowed back on an earlier announcement that wreckage belonging to MS804 had been spotted in the Mediterranean, close to the Greek island of Karpathos. “We stand corrected,” the airline’s vice-president Ahmed Adel said. The debris “is not our aircraft”.
- The Egyptian navy, air force and army are currently searching the sea to the north of Egypt’s coast, with French, Greek, British and US support.
- Egypt’s aviation minister Sherif Fathy said terrorism was more likely than technical failure to be the cause of the crash.
- No group has claimed responsibility for downing the aircraft.
- The plane made “sudden swerves” before dropping off radar over the Mediterranean, reportedly making a 90-degree turn left, and dropping from 37,000 feet to 15,000 feet before swerving 360 degrees right.
- The plane was carrying 56 passengers and 10 crew: two cockpit crew, five cabin crew and three security personnel. The airline said two babies and one child were on board. Among the passengers were30 Egyptians, 15 French, two Iraqis, and one person each from the UK, Belgium, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, Sudan, Chad, Portugal, Algeria and Canada.
- EgyptAir says the captain – named as Mohamed Said Shoukair –has 6,275 flying hours, including 2,101 on the A320; the copilot,Mohamed Mamdouh Ahmed, has 2,766. The plane was manufactured in 2003.
Here’s our latest news story:
Updated
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