EgyptAir Flt. 804 Paris to Cairo Crash- 66 on board

[MuffyBee]

http://www.thelocal.fr/20160519/flight-from-paris-to-egypt-disappears-without-trace
LIVE: Hollande confirms crash of passenger plane from Paris
May 19, 2016

An EgyptAir flight with 66 people on board crashed early on Thursday morning, confirmed President Hollande, after it disappeared from radar en route from Paris to Cairo.

KEY DETAILS
France's President Hollande confirms plane crashed
The flight had 66 people on board (more on passengers here)
Flight was en route from Paris to Cairo
French PM says "no theory can be ruled out"

13.21 - EgyptAir plane fell 22,000 feet, swerved sharply: Greek minister
 
The EgyptAir flight fell 22,000 feet and swerved sharply in Egyptian airspace before it disappeared from radar screens, Greece's defence minister said.
   
"The plane carried out a 90-degree turn to the left and a 360-degree turn to the right, falling from 37,000 to 15,000 feet and the signal was lost at around 10,000 feet," Defence Minister Panos Kammenos told a news conference.
 
13:01 - 'No problem' mentioned by EgyptAir pilot in last contact: Greek official
 
The pilot had "not mentioned a problem" in his final contact, the Greek civil aviation said.
   
"The flight controllers contacted the pilot (with the plane) at a height of 37,000 feet (near Athens)... he did not mention a problem," civil aviation chief Constantinos Litzerakos told Antenna TV.
   
Litzerakos said the controllers had last spoken to the pilot "around 0005 GMT", some 25 minutes before the plane disappeared from Greek radar.
 
A civil aviation statement said the pilot "was in a good mood and gave thanks in Greek when authorised to exit the Athens flight information region.
"We tracked the entire process from the plane's entry (into Greek airspace) to its exit, it does not appear to deviate at all from the coordinates we gave," Litzerakos said.

12:25 - Hollande confirms EgyptAir flight 'crashed'

French President Francois Hollande confirmed that the flight had "crashed", adding: "We will get the truth."

"It is out duty to find out and understand everything about the causes of what has happened. No hypothesis will be ruled out" he said, expressing his "solidarity" and "compassion" with the families of passengers.

Meanwhile, the Paris Prosecutor's department has opened an inquiry into the plane's disappearance, Le Figaro reported.

12:01 - Terrorist attack 'most likely cause' of disappearance: experts

Experts explained that the chances of a mechanical malfunction on the flight were slim.

"A bomb placed on board at Roissy or in Cairo is always possible because it's difficult to make your airport 100 percent watertight, even in an airport with such tight surveillance as Roissy (Charles de Gaulle)," said aeronautics expert Gerard Feldzer.

More....

[MuffyBee]

http://www.nbcnews.com/storyline/egyptair-crash/egyptair-flight-ms804-three-air-marshals-were-aboard-missing-jet-n576621
Egyptair Flight MS804: Three Air Marshals Were Aboard Crashed Jet
May 19, 2016

Three air marshals were among the 66 people aboard Egyptair Flight MS804 that crashed while flying over the Mediterranean Sea early Thursday, authorities said.

France's transport chief Alain Vidalies told reporters that having that many security officers on such a flight was "the usual practice." He added that the plane — which can carry up to 189 passengers — was not transporting any freight.

Former NTSB investigator Greg Feith told MSNBC that Egypt had boosted security recently, which could explain the number of officers on board.

"The only other reason to have security personnel like we do here in the U.S. is if they were transporting some sort of prisoner or someone of interest," Feith added. "But most likely this was similar to our federal air marshals flying on this flight."
 

[Nut44x4]

EgyptAir Flight 804: Wreckage found, airline official says
By Michael Pearson, Faith Karimi and Ian Lee, CNN

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http://www.cnn.com/2016/05/18/middleeast/egyptair-flight-disappears/index.html
Updated 1:25 PM ET, Thu May 19, 2016

video



Cairo (CNN) — Searchers scouring the heavily traveled waters of the Mediterranean Sea for EgyptAir Flight 804 on Thursday have found the plane's wreckage, airline Vice Chairman Ahmed Adel told CNN's Christiane Amanpour.

The debris was about 150 nautical miles north of the Egyptian coast, Adel said. He did not elaborate on the location or condition of the wreckage but said the search and rescue operation was "turning into a search and recovery" mission.

Earlier, a spokesman for Greece's Hellenic National Defense General Staff had said crew aboard an Egyptian search aircraft had spotted two floating objects 210 nautical miles southeast of Crete. It's unclear whether those objects are part of the wreckage described by Adel. 

[Nut44x4]

http://www.centralmaine.com/2016/05/24/remains-from-egyptair-suggest-explosion-forensics-official-says/
Updated May 24

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Remains from EgyptAir suggest explosion, forensics official says
 
However, a spokesman warns against 'spreading false rumors,' and photographs of plane parts don't show signs of a fire.
CAIRO – Human remains retrieved from the crash site of EgyptAir Flight 804 have burn marks and are very small in size, suggesting an explosion on board may have downed the aircraft in the east Mediterranean, a senior Egyptian forensics official said Tuesday.
 
“The logical explanation is that an explosion brought it down,” the official told The Associated Press.

 

The official, who is part of the Egyptian team investigating the crash that killed all 66 people on board the flight from Paris to Cairo early last Thursday, has personally examined the remains at a Cairo morgue. He spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to release the information.
 
However, the head of the government’s forensic agency later Tuesday dismissed as speculation all media reports about human remains from the crash indicating an explosion.
 
“Whatever has been published is baseless and mere assumptions,” Hisham Abdel-Hamid told Egypt’s state MENA news agency.
 
A statement from the government’s investigative committee also warned media outlets to be cautious about what is published “to avoid chaos and spreading false rumors and damaging the state’s high interests and national security.”
 
The Egyptian expert told the AP that all 80 pieces that have been brought to Cairo so far are very small. “There isn’t even a whole body part, like an arm or a head,” said the official, adding that one piece was the left part of a head.
 
He said the body parts are “so tiny” and that at least one piece of a human arm has signs of burns – an indication it might have “belonged to a passenger sitting next to the explosion.”
 
“But I cannot say what caused the blast,” he said. He did not say whether traces of explosives were found on the human remains retrieved so far.
 

NO COMMENT FROM FRENCH AGENCY
 
France’s aviation accident investigation agency would not comment on anything involving the bodies or say whether any information has surfaced in the investigation to indicate an explosion.
 
A French patrol boat took one doctor on board to help with searches when and if the body parts are found. But the French Navy said that if it finds debris and body parts, this would be first reported to Egyptian authorities and French justice officials.
 
In a search for clues, family members of the victims gave been arriving during the day Tuesday at the Cairo morgue forensics’ department to give DNA samples to help identify the remains of their kin, a security official said. The official also spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to talk to reporters.
 
Also, a technical team from Egypt’s forensic medicine department went to a hotel near the Cairo International Airport where relatives of the victims are gathered to take DNA samples to use in identifying the bodies.
 
The EgyptAir crash shocked a nation struggling to revive its ailing economy and contain a resilient insurgency by Islamic militants.
 

[MuffyBee]

http://www.ibtimes.com/egyptair-flight-804-update-black-box-search-zone-mediterranean-narrowed-2377108
EgyptAir Flight 804 Update: Black Box Search Zone In Mediterranean Narrowed
June 2, 2016

The search zone for the crashed EgyptAir Flight 804 has been narrowed to 1.24 miles from 3.1 miles after a French ship picked up signals from one of jet's black boxes, an Egyptian source from the investigative committee told Reuters. The Airbus A320 carrying 66 people went down in the Mediterranean Sea on May 19 killing all aboard.

Although investigators said their main goal is to find the bodies of the victims, they are also searching for the black boxes because batteries of flight recorders last only about a month. Black boxes contain crucial data and recordings that could explain the cause of the tragic end of the EgyptAir flight. French Transport Minister Alain Vidalies said Thursday it would take about eight days before the flight recorder is found.

Meanwhile, EgyptAir Chairman Safwat Musallam dismissed French media reports that the ill-fated plane had sent a series of technical alerts during flights to Asmara in Eritrea and Tunis in the 24 hours prior its disappearance.
 

[MuffyBee]

Hopefully, the discovery of the wreckage and recovery of the cockpit voice recorder will provide answers. 


http://abcnews.go.com/International/egyptair-cockpit-voice-recorder-found-pulled-water/story?id=39903107
EgyptAir Cockpit Voice Recorder Found, Pulled From Water
June 16, 2016

The cockpit voice recorder from the crashed EgyptAir Flight 804 has been found in the Mediterranean Sea, investigators announced today.

The French vessel John Lethbridge, which was contracted by the Egyptian government to join the search for the doomed plane, located the cockpit voice recorder about 13,000 feet under sea. The device was damaged but the memory unity, which is considered the most important part, was retrieved and sent to investigators who will conduct an analysis and unload the voice conversations, a spokeswoman for Egypt's Ministry of Civil Aviation said.
 
Egypt's investigation committee said in a statement Wednesday that the vessel John Lethbridge "had identified several main locations of the wreckage." It added that it obtained images of the wreckage located between the Greek island of Crete and the Egyptian coast.