The disappearance of EgyptAir flight MS804

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The disappearance of EgyptAir flight MS804: a timeline

AFP on May 20, 2016, 3:30 am

Cairo (AFP) - Below is a timeline of the main developments since an EgyptAir flight from Paris to Cairo crashed into the sea on Thursday with 66 people aboard.

All times are GMT, except where stated.

- 0029 GMT: Flight MS804 disappears from the radar, the Greek civil aviation authority says.

A tweet on the airline's official account says the plane had left Paris at 23:09 pm local time (2109 GMT), "heading to Cairo (and) has disappeared from radar". Shortly afterwards the company says that 66 people, including 56 passengers, were onboard. It says the aircraft had entered Egyptian airspace when it vanished.

- Shortly before 0500 EgyptAir's Vice President Ahmed Adel says that radar contact had been lost when the aircraft was 30 or 40 miles (48-64 kilometres) from Egypt's northern coast. He said the control tower had not received a distress signal.

- 0506 GMT: The Egyptian military deploys search aircraft and naval vessels to locate the plane. Greece is also participating in the search for the Airbus A320, it says.

- 0536: The plane was carrying 30 Egyptian and 15 French passengers, as well as a Briton and a Canadian, EgyptAir says. An Algerian, a Belgian, a Chadian, two Iraqis, a Kuwaiti, a Portuguese, a Saudi and a Sudanese were also on board.

- 05:45: The French and Egyptian presidents, Francois Hollande and Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, agree to cooperate closely to establish as soon as possible the circumstances behind the plane's disappearance.

- 0626: A former director of France's air accident investigation authority BEA, Jean-Paul Troadec, says the fact that the plane sent no distress signal was a pointer to a "brutal event" which "leads us to think of an attack".

- 0630: Hollande gathers his top ministers for a crisis meeting. Shortly afterwards Foreign Minister Jean-Marc Ayrault says a crisis cell is being set up at his ministry.

- 0715 GMT: The Egyptian army denies it detected any "distress messages" from the flight, contradicting a statement from EgyptAir which had said it was informed by the military that it detected one.

- 0743: The plane crashed into the sea off the southern Greek island of Karpathos, situated between Rhodes and Crete, while in Egyptian airspace, a Greece aviation source says.

- 0930: Some relatives of the victims are seen arriving at the emergency centre at Charles de Gaulle, Paris's main airport.

- 1000: The pilot had "not mentioned a problem" in his final contact, the Greek civil aviation says.

1024: Hollande says "no hypothesis is ruled out or favoured." The Paris prosecutor opens a probe.

- 1055: The plane fell 22,000 feet (6,705 metres) and swerved sharply in Egyptian airspace before it disappeared from radar screens, Greece's defence minister Panos Kammenos says.

- 1200 GMT: Egypt's aviation minister Sherif Fathy says he cannot rule out that an attack or a technical failure brought down the flight.

- 1300: Signs of possible wreckage have been found off the Greek island of Crete, says Greek military spokesman Vassilis Beletsiotis.

- 1311: Egypt's aviation minister Fathy says that a "terror" attack was a more probable explanation for the disappearance of the flight than technical failure.

 

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EgyptAir crash: What we know

AFP on May 20, 2016, 3:03 am

Paris (AFP) - Thursday's crash of an EgyptAir passenger plane near a Greek island en route from Paris to Cairo with 66 people aboard remains unexplained.

This is what is known so far:

- The Airbus A320 was in Eritrea, Egypt, Tunisia and France on Wednesday, according to the website FlightRadar24.

It began the day in the Eritrean capital Asmara, where it had arrived from Cairo on Tuesday evening.

It took off at 0130 GMT for Cairo, arriving two-and-a-half hours later.

The plane took off again at 0621 GMT for Tunis, a flight lasting a little more than three hours.

After one hour on the tarmac, it headed back to Cairo, arriving at 1317 GMT.

Two hours later it flew to Paris's Charles de Gaulle airport, landing at 1955 GMT.

It left the French capital shortly after 2100 GMT and was to have landed in Cairo at 0305 GMT on Thursday.

- The flight's 56 passengers included a small boy and two infants as well as a seven-member crew and three security officers, according to EgyptAir. The passengers included 30 Egyptians, 15 French nationals, two Iraqis, and one passenger each from Britain, Canada, Belgium, Portugal, Algeria, Sudan, Chad, Saudi Arabia and Kuwait.

- The pilot's last contact with air traffic controllers was around 0005 GMT Thursday when he mentioned no problem, and the plane had not deviated from its course, Greek civil aviation authorities said.

He was even "in a good mood, and thanked (the controllers) in Greek," said civil aviation chief Constantin Litzerakos.

- The plane disappeared from Greek radar screens around 0029 GMT while already in Egyptian airspace, a Greek aviation source told AFP.

The plane crashed off the Greek island of Karpathos, between Rhodes and Crete.

- Egyptian Aviation Minister Sherif Fathy said a terrorist attack was a more likely explanation for the crash than a technical fault.

- French President Francois Hollande said "no hypothesis is ruled out or favoured (including the) hypothesis that everyone has on their mind -- a terrorist hypothesis."

- Downward spiral -

- Greek Defence Minister Panos Kammenos said that at 0037 GMT, when the plane was flying at 37,000 feet (more than 11,200 metres), it "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."

- EgyptAir initially said it had been informed of a "distress message" by the military, but the army later stated there had been no emergency call.

- Greek media reports that a sailor in the area saw a ball of fire in the sky have not been officially confirmed.

- The Greek army told AFP that possible debris from the Airbus A320 was spotted southeast of Crete by an Egyptian transport plane within Egyptian airspace.

- Airbus delivered the plane to EgyptAir in November 2003 and it had logged some 48,000 hours of flight. A320s tend to operate safely for 30 to 40 years.

 

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US EgyptAir image 'shows no sign of blast'

AAP on May 20, 2016, 6:58 am

The last known location of EgyptAir flight MS804. Picture: FlightRadar24.com

A US review of satellite imagery so far has not produced any signs of an explosion aboard the EgyptAir flight that crashed en route from Paris to Cairo, officials from multiple US agencies have told Reuters.

The officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss intelligence matters, said the conclusion was the result of a preliminary examination of imagery on Thursday and cautioned against media reports suggesting the United States believed a bomb was responsible for the crash.

The United States has not ruled out any possible causes for the crash, including mechanical failure, terrorism or a deliberate act by the pilot or crew, they said.

 

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'Smoke on board' EgyptAir plane before crash

AFP on May 22, 2016, 1:47 am

Cairo (AFP) - Smoke was detected inside an EgyptAir plane shortly before it plunged into the Mediterranean with 66 people on board, investigators said Saturday, offering clues but no answers about why it crashed.

The Airbus A320 had been flying from Paris to Cairo early Thursday when it plummeted and turned full circle before vanishing from radar screens, without its crew sending a distress signal.

Egypt's military released pictures of wreckage recovered so far, including a pink bag decorated with butterflies, a life vest, shredded seat covers and mangled debris showing the EgyptAir name.

France's aviation safety agency said Flight MS804 had transmitted automated messages indicating smoke in the cabin as the disaster unfolded.

While the information may help investigators, more wreckage including the black boxes will need to be found before they can piece together what happened.

"There were ACARS messages emitted by the plane indicating that there was smoke in the cabin shortly before data transmission broke off," a spokesman for France's Bureau of Investigations and Analysis told AFP.

It was "far too soon to interpret and understand the cause of the accident as long as we have not found the wreckage or the flight data recorders", he said.

ACARS, which stands for Aircraft Communications Addressing and Reporting System, transmits short messages between aircraft and ground stations.

Search teams were scouring the eastern Mediterranean on Saturday for more parts of the plane and the black boxes.

While Egypt's aviation minister has pointed to terrorism as more likely than technical failure, French Foreign Minister Jean-Marc Ayrault said Saturday that nothing was being ruled out.

"At this time... all theories are being examined and none is favoured," he told a news conference in Paris after meeting relatives of passengers.

The disaster comes just seven months after the bombing of a Russian airliner over Egypt's Sinai peninsula in October that killed all 224 people on board.

The Islamic State group was quick to claim responsibility for the attack, but there has been no such claim linked to the EgyptAir crash.

- 'Families want the bodies' -

Relatives of the passengers on the EgyptAir flight gathered at a hotel near Cairo airport on Friday after meeting airline officials as they struggled to come to terms with the catastrophe.

"They haven't died yet. No one knows. We're asking for God's mercy," said a woman in her 50s whose daughter had been on board.

EgyptAir Holding Company chairman Safwat Moslem told AFP on Saturday that the priority was finding the passengers' remains and the flight recorders, which will stop emitting a signal in a month when the batteries run out.

"The families want the bodies. That is what concerns us. The army is working on this. This is what we are focusing on," he said.

A French patrol boat carrying equipment capable of tracing the plane's black boxes was expected on Sunday or Monday.

The plane disappeared between the Greek island of Karpathos and the Egyptian coast in the early hours of Thursday.

It had turned sharply twice before plunging 22,000 feet (6,700 metres) and vanishing from radar screens, said Greek Defence Minister Panos Kammenos.

- Boy, babies on board -

Experts stressed there was not enough information yet to explain the incident.

"All you can say... is that there was smoke. The smoke could be due to a fire in the plane following a technical problem, or it could also mean an explosion... but it is far too early to formulate hypotheses," Jean-Pail Troadec, a former BEA director, told AFP.

"The fact that there was no distress call doesn't necessarily mean anything," Troadec said.

"The pilots maybe had other things to do, reacting to the event. Sending a message is not the first priority."

Personal belongings and parts of the Airbus A320 had been spotted by teams searching the sea off Egypt's northern coast about 290 kilometres (180 miles) from the city of Alexandria, the Egyptian military said.

Kammenos said the search teams, which include multinational aircraft and ships, had found "a body part, two seats and one or more items of luggage".

The passengers were 30 Egyptians, 15 French citizens, two Iraqis, two Canadians, and citizens from Algeria, Belgium, Britain, Chad, Portugal, Saudi Arabia and Sudan. They included a boy and two babies.

Seven crew and three security personnel were also on board.

The European Space Agency said one of its satellites had on Thursday spotted an oil slick about 40 kilometres southeast of the plane's last known location.

In October, foreign governments issued travel warnings for Egypt and demanded a review of security at its airports after the Islamic State group said it downed the Russian airliner over Sinai with a bomb concealed in a soda can that had been smuggled on the plane.

IS has been waging a deadly insurgency against Egyptian security forces and has claimed attacks in both France and Egypt.

 

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Smoke doesn't reveal what caused EgyptAir crash, experts say

AFP on May 22, 2016, 1:08 am

Paris (AFP) - Smoke detected in the cabin shortly before EgyptAir flight MS804 crashed into the Mediterranean suggests there was a fire on board, but is not enough to establish the cause of the disaster, experts said Saturday.

So what can be inferred from this latest discovery?

- What were the signals? -

Shortly before the plane disappeared from the radars, it transmitted a series of automatic messages indicating there was smoke in the cabin, France's BEA aviation safety agency said.

According to specialist magazine Aviation Herald, the Aircraft Communications Addressing and Reporting System (ACARS) messages read: "smoke lavatory smoke" then "avionics smoke" -- referring to the plane's electronic systems. Both messages were confirmed by BEA.

But the agency did not comment on a third message cited by Aviation Herald, which indicated a "fault" with the FCU, the pilots' flight control unit in the cockpit.

- Do they point to a cause? -

A BEA spokesman said it was "far too soon to interpret and understand the cause of Thursday's accident as long as we have not found the wreckage or the flight data recorders."

Jean-Paul Troadec, a former BEA director, agreed: "All you can say... is that there was smoke. The smoke could be due to a fire in the plane following a technical problem, or it could also mean an explosion... but it is far too early to formulate hypotheses."

- Why didn't the pilots raise the alarm? -

"The fact that there was no distress call doesn't necessarily mean anything," Troadec said.

"The pilots maybe had other things to do, reacting to the event. Sending a message is not the first priority."

Francois Grangier, an airline pilot and judicially certified expert on crash investigations, agreed there might not have been time.

"A fire is extremely rapid, extremely violent, and you know when smoke begins to invade a cockpit the first priority is to fight the smoke."

He said the crew would have been wearing oxygen masks and that one of them would have had to read the procedures off a printed checklist if display screens were no longer legible.

"So you can see how calling an (air traffic) controller who can do nothing besides tell you your position" would not be a priority, he said.

- Did the pilots have time to react? -

"Clearly, given the time of the (ACARS) messages and the sequence of the messages, everything happened in a minuscule space of time," Grangier said.

"Basically it means they had a very, very, very rapid invasion of smoke into the cockpit, and visibility can be reduced to a few centimetres when there's smoke. So... it's possible they couldn't see anything at all. And then the temperature could become unbearable."

 

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EgyptAir crash: What we know

AFP on May 21, 2016, 11:28 pm

Paris (AFP) - French experts confirmed Saturday that smoke had been detected in the cabin of an EgyptAir plane that crashed into the eastern Mediterranean carrying 66 people, but what brought it down remains a mystery.

Here is what we know so far:

What happened?

EgyptAir flight MS804 disappeared off the radar 0029 GMT on Thursday morning while flying over the eastern Mediterranean en route from Paris to Cairo.

The Airbus A320, which was carrying 56 passengers and 10 crew members, had just crossed from Greek airspace into Egyptian airspace and was about 35 minutes from its destination.

About three minutes before it disappeared off the radar, the plane transmitted a number of automatic messages indicating there was smoke in the cabin, France's air safety agency said on Saturday.

The signals indicated there was smoke in the front toilets near the cockpit, smoke in the electronic systems and a "fault" with the pilots' flight control unit in the cockpit, an expert told AFP.

The plane did not send out a distress signal and crashed between the island of Karpathos and the Egyptian coastline, Greek aviation officials told AFP.

Wreckage from the plane, luggage and body parts were found in the sea on Friday by an Egyptian military search team in an area about 290 kilometres (180 miles) north of the coastal city of Alexandria.

How it happened

The pilot's last contact with Greek air traffic controllers was around 0005 GMT when he appeared to be in good spirits and made no mention of any problem.

But it ran into trouble just over 20 minutes later as it was flying at 37,000 feet, (more than 11,200 metres) with Greek Defence Minister Panos Kammenos saying the plane swerved sharply to the left, then to the right, falling 22,000 feet, before disappearing from radar screens at around 10,000 feet.

Why it did not send out a distress signal remains unclear. And investigators so far have no indication as to what caused the plane to suddenly swerve before plummeting out of the sky.

Although the presence of smoke in the cabin may help the probe, experts will only be able to piece together a fuller picture when more wreckage is found, including the black boxes.

Was it brought down deliberately?

Egypt's aviation minister said a "terrorist attack" was a more likely cause than technical failure for the crash, voicing widely-held fears of a repeat of an October attack over Sinai that brought down a Russian passenger jet, killing 224 people.

Aviation experts agree there is little chance that a mechanical fault, such as the explosion of an engine, was responsible. And they say it is unlikely the plane was shot down.

But despite fears the plane was deliberately brought down, there is no evidence so far to support that thesis.

"We have absolutely no indication on the causes," French Foreign Minister Jean-Marc Ayrault said Friday.

Was the plane safe?

Airbus delivered the plane to EgyptAir in November 2003 and it had logged 48,000 hours of flying time. Experts say the A320 has an excellent safety record as the best-selling medium-range airliner in the world, with one taking off or landing around the world every 30 seconds.

Before taking off from Paris on Wednesday evening, the plane had been in Eritrea, Egypt and Tunisia, according to the website FlightRadar24.

It began the day in the Eritrean capital Asmara, then returned to Cairo before flying to Tunis. It then headed back to Cairo where it stayed for two hours before flying to Paris Charles de Gaulle airport. It took off from the French capital at 2100 GMT and was to have landed in Cairo at 0105 GMT on Thursday.

What remains unclear is whether the plane was checked at each location, or how thoroughly.

 

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Images emerge of EgyptAir plane debris

By Scott D'Arcy - AAP on May 21, 2016, 9:49 pm

New images have emerged of shattered parts of the EgyptAir plane recovered from the crash site in the Mediterranean.

The Egyptian military released photographs of the debris including fragments of seats, passenger belongings and a life vest featuring the airline's logo as a major search continued.

The development came after reports suggested smoke was detected in parts of the plane before it disappeared from radar and plummeted into the water early on Thursday.

Flight MS804 - carrying 56 passengers and 10 crew members from Paris to Cairo - went down about halfway between the Greek island of Crete and Egypt's coastline, or around 280km offshore, after take-off from Charles de Gaulle Airport.

Before it disappeared from radar screens around 2.45am Cairo time, the plane spun all the way around and suddenly lost altitude.

What caused the Airbus A320 to crash remains a mystery as authorities scramble to recover the aircraft's black boxes.

French air accident investigation agency spokesman Sebastien Barthe told the Associated Press (AP) that the plane's automatic detection system sent messages indicating smoke a few minutes before it disappeared from radar.

The messages "generally mean the start of a fire", he said, but added: "We are drawing no conclusions from this. Everything else is pure conjecture."

Egypt's army spokesman said debris and passenger belongings had been located 290km off the coast of Alexandria in Egypt.

Airport officials in Egypt said investigators will inspect the debris and personal belongings that have been recovered.

Egyptian and Russian officials have said the plane may have been brought down by terrorists, and there are no signs of survivors.

Among the passengers was Briton Richard Osman, a 40-year-old father-of-two who was described by his younger brother Alastair as a workaholic and a very admirable person who "never deviated from the straight path".

The Airbus A320 was built in 2003 and was flying at 37,000ft, the airline said on Twitter.

It tweeted that the pilot had logged 6275 flying hours, including 2101 hours on the A320, and the co-pilot had logged 2766 hours.

 

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'No theories ruled out' on EgyptAir crash after smoke report

AFP on May 21, 2016, 9:15 pm

Video EgyptAir Flight 804 Sent Data Suggesting Smoke, Fire Before Disappearance
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Paris (AFP) - French Foreign Minister Jean-Marc Ayrault said Saturday that no theory on the cause of the EgyptAir crash has been ruled out, after revelations of smoke in the cabin minutes before the disaster.

"At this time... all theories are being examined and none is favoured," he told a news conference after meeting with around 100 relatives of passengers who were aboard the doomed A320 that left Paris early Thursday for Cairo with 66 people aboard.

"The reports circulating here and there, which by the way are sometimes contradictory, give rise too often to nearly definitive conclusions," Ayrault said, warning of the "painful tension" caused to the families of the victims.

"Finding the plane is of course the priority, along with finding the black boxes to analyse them, which will allow us to answer legitimate questions," he said, referring to the voice and flight data recorders.

France's "dual goal" is to offer "solidarity with the families but also transparency... on the circumstances of this plane's disappearance," said the foreign minister, who was joined by Egypt's ambassador to France at the meeting with the family members.

"I strongly emphasised the desire of the French authorities to tell the entire truth about what happened," he said. "It's a legitimate and essential expectation for all the families."

The meeting took place "in a climate of intense emotion and great dignity," Ayrault added.

Crash investigators briefed the relatives on what is known so far and the procedures for establishing the cause.

"Methods and procedures for identifying the victims" were also explained to the families, Ayrault said.

The passengers included 30 Egyptians, 15 French citizens, two Iraqis, two Canadians, and citizens from Algeria, Belgium, Britain, Chad, Portugal, Saudi Arabia and Sudan. They included a boy and two babies.

Seven crew members and three security personnel were also on board.

 

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Robot sub in hunt for EgyptAir black boxes

AP on May 23, 2016, 7:27 pm

Egypt has sent a submarine to join the hunt for the flight recorders from the EgyptAir jetliner that crashed in the Mediterranean and killed all 66 people aboard, as more debris has been spotted.

The US Navy's Sixth Fleet said one of its patrol aircraft supporting the search had spotted more than 100 pieces of debris positively identified as having come from an aircraft, and passed the data to the Egyptian Navy, Reuters reports.

Mounting evidence pointed to a sudden and dramatic catastrophe that led to Thursday's crash of Flight 804 from Paris to Cairo, although Egyptian President Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi said it "will take time" to establish what happened aboard the Airbus A320.

In his first public comments since the crash, el-Sissi cautioned against premature speculation.

"It is very, very important to us to establish the circumstances that led to the crash of that aircraft," el-Sissi said in remarks broadcast live on Egyptian TV.

"There is not one scenario that we can exclusively subscribe to. ... All scenarios are possible."

A submarine belonging to the Oil Ministry was headed to the site about 290 kilometres north of the Egyptian port of Alexandria to join the search, el-Sissi said. The vessel can operate at a depth of 3000 metres, he added.

After starting his comments with a minute of silence to remember the victims, he thanked the nations that have joined Egyptian ships and aircraft in the search.

Besides Egypt, ships and planes from Britain, Cyprus, France, Greece and the US are taking part in the search for the debris from the aircraft, including its flight data and cockpit voice recorders. Some wreckage, including human remains, have been recovered already.

El-Sissi spoke a day after the leak of flight data indicated a sensor detected smoke in a lavatory and a fault in two of the plane's cockpit windows in the final moments of the flight. The data was published by The Aviation Herald.

Authorities say the plane lurched left, then right, spun all the way around and plummeted 38,000 feet (11,582 metres) into the sea, never issuing a distress call.

Investigators have been studying the passenger list and questioning ground crew at Paris' Charles de Gaulle airport, where the aeroplane took off.

In Cairo, several hundred mourners attended a memorial service on Sunday for nine Coptic Christians killed in the crash, including 26-year-old flight attendants Yara Tawfik.

The service was held in the Boutrossiya Church, located inside Cairo's St. Mark Cathedral, the seat of Egypt's Coptic Orthodox Church.

Relatives sobbed and prayed as Bishop Daniel, the senior cleric who led the service, offered words of comfort on behalf of Pope Tawadros II, leader of the Coptic church.

Nader Medhat, a cousin of Tawfik, said on Saturday he was still trying to come to terms with the disaster.

"We hear about such accidents, a plane falls or explodes, but it is always far away from us, it was always so far-fetched until it happened to us," he said.

A service was held on Saturday in a Cairo mosque for co-pilot Mohamed Mamdouh, 25, another of the 30 Egyptians among the dead.

"The funeral service was so packed with people there was no place for anyone to stand," said Ahmed Amin, Mamdouh's childhood friend. "It was really heartwarming."

 

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EgyptAir victims' relatives give samples for DNA tests

AFP on May 24, 2016, 11:31 pm

Cairo (AFP) - Egyptian forensics officials collected DNA Tuesday from relatives of EgyptAir Flight MS804 victims to help identify body parts retrieved from the Mediterranean, where the crash killed 66 people, the airline said.

Investigators are still searching for Airbus A320's two black boxes on the seabed as they seek answers as to why the aircraft came down early on Thursday.

"Body parts arrived at the morgue yesterday and other body parts arrived the day before yesterday," EgyptAir Holding Company chairman Safwat Musallam told AFP on Tuesday.

"DNA samples have been collected from the victims' families to help identify body parts," EgyptAir said in an emailed statement.

Experts and sources close to the investigation told AFP local media reports that body parts analysis showed evidence of an explosion did not in fact reveal anything about the cause of the disaster.

Hesham Abdel Hameed, head of the justice ministry's forensics department, also denied that the reports were accurate, according to the website of state-owned Al-Ahram newspaper.

It reported Abdel Hameed as saying such comments are hypothetical and could not have been issued by the department or any of its forensics doctors.

"No trace of any explosives has been found so far on debris or body parts," one source told AFP.

"When a plane crashes, an explosion takes place at some stage or another, reducing the plane to pieces," another source said.

This is "either as a result of mechanical failure or a criminal act, or when the plane hits the sea after falling 11 kilometres, as in this case".

"This does not advance the investigation, unless we find traces of an explosive, which is not the case at this stage," the source added.

 

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Deep-water search for EgyptAir black boxes to start 'in coming days': France's BEA

AFP on May 27, 2016, 7:47 am

Paris (AFP) - Deep-water search operations to locate the wreckage and black boxes of the EgyptAir jet that plunged into the Mediterranean last week will start in the coming days, France's BEA air safety agency said Thursday.

"A deep-water search campaign will begin in the coming days with the arrival in the accident area of the French navy surveillance vessel 'La Place'," said the BEA, which is working alongside the Egyptian authorities to investigate the May 19 crash.

All 66 people on board the flight from Paris to Cairo were killed. Investigators are still searching for the Airbus A320's two black boxes on the seabed as they seek answers as to why the aircraft went down.

Two BEA investigators were on board the La Place ship as it set sail from Corsica on Thursday.

The vessel is equipped with three deep-water devices known as Detector 6000s that can detect the black boxes' signals, the French agency said.

The Egyptian authorities "will be piloting these underwater searches" with the BEA's help, it added.

Talks are still under way to add to the mission a second vessel equipped with a deep-sea exploration robot and the recovery capabilities required to work at an estimated depth of 3,000 metres (10,000 feet).

Time is running out because black boxes can only emit signals for about a month.

French Foreign Minister Jean-Marc Ayrault said Wednesday that Egypt was enlisting two French companies to help find the black boxes.

The two countries will share the costs.

Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi has said it is too early to tell what caused the plane to plunge into the sea, and investigators have not ruled out terrorism as a possible cause.

Ayrault last week said "all theories are being examined and none is favoured".

The passengers were 30 Egyptians, 15 French citizens, two Iraqis, two Canadians, and citizens from Algeria, Belgium, Britain, Chad, Portugal, Saudi Arabia and Sudan. They included a boy and two babies.

Seven crew and three security personnel were also on board.

Earlier Thursday, hundreds of people gathered in Cairo for a candlelight vigil for the victims of the crash.

Clutching bouquets of flowers, candles and the Egyptian flag, around 500 mourners assembled at the Cairo Opera House and observed a minute's silence in honour of the victims.

 

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Breakthrough in search for EgyptAir plane as 'signals detected' near crash site

Yahoo and Agencies on May 27, 2016, 7:47 am

U.S. Navy LT. JG Dylon Porlas uses binoculars to look through the window of a U.S. Navy Lockheed P-3C Orion patrol aircraft from Sicily on Sunday, searching the area in the Mediterranean Sea for the Egyptair flight 804. Photo: AP Photo/Salvatore Cavalli

A breakthrough in the search for a missing EgyptAir plane after signals were reportedly detected from the Mediterranean Sea near where the plane crashed.

Search crews will reportedly reduce the search area from a 64-kilometre radius down to a five-kilometre radius with new hope of discovering the jet's black boxes.

Deep-water search operations will start soon, France's BEA air safety agency said on Thursday.

"A deep-water search campaign will begin in the coming days with the arrival in the accident area of the French navy surveillance vessel 'La Place'," said the BEA, which is working alongside the Egyptian authorities to investigate the May 19 crash.

All 66 people on board the flight from Paris to Cairo were killed. Investigators are still searching for the Airbus A320's two black boxes on the seabed as they seek answers as to why the aircraft went down.

Some of the passengers' belongings and parts of the wreck of EgyptAir flight MS804. Photo: Egyptian Armed Forces/Getty Images

Two BEA investigators were on board the La Place ship as it set sail from Corsica on Thursday.

The vessel is equipped with three deep-water devices known as Detector 6000s that can detect the black boxes' signals, the French agency said.

The Egyptian authorities "will be piloting these underwater searches" with the BEA's help, it added.

Talks are still under way to add to the mission a second vessel equipped with a deep-sea exploration robot and the recovery capabilities required to work at an estimated depth of 3,000 metres (10,000 feet).

Time is running out because black boxes can only emit signals for about a month.

French Foreign Minister Jean-Marc Ayrault said Wednesday that Egypt was enlisting two French companies to help find the black boxes.

The two countries will share the costs.

Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi has said it is too early to tell what caused the plane to plunge into the sea, and investigators have not ruled out terrorism as a possible cause.

Tarek Abu Laban, center, who lost four relatives in the EgyptAir plane crash. Photo: AP Photo/Amr Nabil

Ayrault last week said "all theories are being examined and none is favoured".

The passengers were 30 Egyptians, 15 French citizens, two Iraqis, two Canadians, and citizens from Algeria, Belgium, Britain, Chad, Portugal, Saudi Arabia and Sudan. They included a boy and two babies.

Relatives and friends of EgyptAir hostess Yara Hani (portrait), who was onboard Flight MS804. Photo: STR/AFP/Getty Images

Seven crew and three security personnel were also on board.

Earlier Thursday, hundreds of people gathered in Cairo for a candlelight vigil for the victims of the crash.

Clutching bouquets of flowers, candles and the Egyptian flag, around 500 mourners assembled at the Cairo Opera House and observed a minute's silence in honour of the victims.

 

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Private firm hired to hunt for EgyptAir black boxes

AFP on May 29, 2016, 4:46 am

Cairo (AFP) - Egypt has hired a private firm to help find EgyptAir MS804's black boxes in an area narrowed down by an emergency signal sent when it hit the Mediterranean last week.

The Egyptian-led investigative committee said in a statement on Saturday that Deep Ocean Search (DOS) was taking part in the search, after the civil aviation ministry in Cairo said it had contracted the company.

"The investigative committee has received a satellite report which indicated that an ELT (emergency locator transmitter) had been detected, and it has relayed the coordinates to the search" teams, the statement said.

It did not indicate when search teams had been told about the signal, which would have been transmitted and detected when the aircraft came down on May 19 while flying from Paris to Cairo.

EgyptAir had said after the crash that a distress signal had been detected by the Egyptian military, which later denied the report.

The Airbus A320 with 66 people aboard, including 30 Egyptians and 15 French nationals, crashed in the Mediterranean between the Greek island of Crete and the Egyptian coast.

French and Egyptian aviation officials have said it is too soon to determine what caused the disaster, although an attack on the aircraft has not been ruled out.

DOS says it can operate at depths of up to 6,000 metres (20,000 feet) and has a robot capable of mapping the seabed.

France's aviation safety agency has said the aircraft transmitted automated messages indicating smoke in the cabin and a fault in the flight control unit before contact was lost.

 

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Signals detected from EgyptAir black box

AFP on June 2, 2016, 4:05 am

Cairo (AFP) - A French navy vessel using deep-water listening devices has detected signals from one of the black boxes that could explain why the EgyptAir plane crashed into the Mediterranean, investigators said Wednesday.

It is expected to be at least another week before an underwater robot can recover the two flight recorders of the Airbus A320 that went down with 66 people aboard en route from Paris to Cairo on May 19.

A digital flight data recorder gathers information about the speed, altitude and direction of the plane, while a cockpit voice recorder keeps track of conversations and other sounds in the pilots' cabin.

The signals were picked up by French survey ship Laplace which is using acoustic detection systems to listen for the "pings" emitted by the flight recorders, said France's aviation safety agency BEA.

"The detection of this signal is a first step," said BEA official Remi Jouty.

Egypt's civil aviation ministry had announced the potential breakthrough earlier, saying the signals were "assumed to be from one of the data recorders".

The French navy, in a statement, said the flight recorders still had to be precisely located at a estimated depth of 3,000 metres (10,000 feet).

Some of the wreckage has already been pulled from the Mediterranean along with belongings of passengers on board the jet, which crashed between the Greek island of Crete and the Egyptian coast.

No survivors have been found from flight MS804.

Another vessel sent by Deep Ocean Search (DOS), a private company hired to help find the black boxes, is on its way to the area carrying a ship with a robot capable of diving up to 3,000 metres to retrieve the recorders.

The ship is due to arrive at the site within a week, the Egyptian ministry said.

"Extensive search efforts are being carried out to locate the two data recorders in preparation for their retrieval," it said.

The black boxes have enough battery power to emit signals for four or five weeks.

The search area is located around 290 kilometres (180 miles) north of the Egyptian coast, according to a source close to the investigation.

- Technical fault or bomb? -

The French navy surveillance vessel Laplace which detected the signals is equipped with three devices capable of picking up the "pings" from the black boxes from a distance of up to five kilometres (3.1 miles).

Investigators have said it is too soon to determine what caused the disaster although a terror attack has not been ruled out.

France's aviation safety agency has said the aircraft transmitted automated messages indicating smoke in the cabin and a fault in the flight control unit minutes before disappearing from radar screens.

Investigators were able to narrow down the search site thanks to an emergency signal sent via satellite by the plane's locator transmitter when it hit the Mediterranean last week.

Two BEA investigators are on board the Laplace while three others are in Cairo along with an Airbus expert to help the probe, according to the French government.

The passengers were 30 Egyptians, 15 French citizens, two Iraqis, two Canadians, and citizens from Algeria, Belgium, Britain, Chad, Portugal, Saudi Arabia and Sudan. They included a boy and two babies.

Seven crew and three security personnel were also on board.

The crash comes after the bombing of a Russian airliner over Egypt's restive Sinai Peninsula last October that killed all 224 people on board.

The Islamic State group claimed responsibility for that attack within hours, but there has been no such claim linked to the EgyptAir crash.

IS has been waging a deadly insurgency against Egyptian security forces and has claimed attacks in both France and Egypt.

In October, foreign governments issued travel warnings for Egypt and demanded a review of security at its airports after IS said it downed the Russian airliner over Sinai with a bomb concealed in a soda can that had been smuggled on the plane.

 

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EgyptAir black box search zone narrowed

AAP on June 2, 2016, 9:41 pm

Search teams are zeroing in on the wreckage of EgyptAir flight 804 after a French vessel picked up a signal from one of the crashed jet's black boxes.

An Egyptian source on the investigation committee told Reuters the search zone for the crashed Airbus A320 had been reduced to a two-kilometre radius from 5km.

France's transport minister said on Thursday it would be about eight days before the flight recorder was recovered from the Mediterranean seabed.

Locating the black boxes is crucial to understanding why the jet plummeted into the Mediterranean en route from Paris to Cairo on May 19, killing all 66 people on board.

EgyptAir's chairman, Safwat Musallam, denied French media reports the aircraft had sent a series of technical warnings during flights to Asmara in Eritrea and Tunis in the 24 hours before it disappeared off radar screens and crashed.

"For me it's not true," Musallam said on the sidelines of the IATA annual meeting in Dublin when asked about the reports.

Musallam said the aircraft had not experienced any maintenance issues before departure and that the plane was "normal".

"We fully trust the aircraft and the pilot," he said.

Without the black boxes, which lie in waters up to 3000m deep, investigators do not have enough information to determine whether the aeroplane suffered a technical problem or was brought down deliberately.

The jet transmitted a series of messages in the minutes before it crashed showing a rise in temperature at the co-pilot's window and smoke on board, but investigators say these shed little light on the cause of the plane's disappearance.

French Transport Minister Alain Vidalies said he could not confirm reports by the Le Parisien newspaper and France 3 TV that the jet had also sent warnings indicating smoke through the automatic Aircraft Communications Addressing and Reporting System (ACARS) on earlier flights.

"We have ... a sudden event which could point towards an attack. On the other hand we have other information which points more towards an accident," Vidalies told France Info radio.

There are conflicting reports of the plane's last moments as it crossed from Greek to Egyptian airspace.

The head of Egypt's air navigation has told Reuters the plane disappeared suddenly from radar while cruising at about 37,000 feet (11,278m).

On the day of the crash the Greek defence minister said the plane swerved and dropped to 15,000 feet (4572m) before disappearing from screens.

 

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Deep-sea robot to join search for Egyptair wreck 'from Friday'

AFP on June 9, 2016, 11:13 pm

Paris (AFP) - A research vessel with an underwater robot is set to begin searching the Mediterranean "as from Friday" for the wreck of the EgyptAir plane that crashed last month, according to the French aviation safety agency BEA.

Egypt has hired the "John Lethbridge", which is owned by the private Deep Ocean Search company, to comb the ocean floor for the Airbus A320 that went down with 66 people aboard en route from Paris to Cairo on May 19.

The ship is en route and "should arrive in the area as from Friday," BEA director Remi Jouty told reporters.

A French navy vessel using deep-water listening devices picked up signals from one of the black boxes over a week ago, but so far it has failed to locate either it or the second recorder.

"For the moment we are hopeful of managing to locate these recorders while they continue to emit (pings)," Jouty said, acknowledging "we have to be quick".

The the flight data recorder and cockpit voice recorder have enough battery power to emit signals for four to five weeks.

The area where the plane went down is believed to be about 3,000 metres (10,000 feet) deep.

The "John Lethbridge" has a side scan sonar that provides digital images of the seabed, as well as a robot that is capable of diving to 3,000 metres.

Some wreckage was retrieved from the Mediterranean last month, along with belongings of passengers on board flight MS804, but no bodies have been found so far.

The plane crashed between the Greek island of Crete and the Egyptian coast after disappearing suddenly from radar screens.

Investigators have said it is too soon to determine what caused the disaster.

While speculation initially centred on a terror attack, a technical fault has also not been ruled out, with automated messages sent by the plane shortly before its demise indicating smoke in the cabin and a fault in the flight control unit.

The crash took place seven months after the bombing of a Russian airliner over Egypt's restive Sinai Peninsula in October that killed all 224 people on board.

The Islamic State group claimed responsibility for that attack. There has been no such claim over the EgyptAir crash.

 

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'Probable' EgyptAir debris washes up on Israeli beach

AFP on July 8, 2016, 5:35 pm

Aircraft debris believed to have come from an EgyptAir crash in May has washed up on a beach near Tel Aviv, an official in the Israeli premier's office said on Friday.

"Debris has been collected and there is a high probability that it originates from the Egyptian plane," the official in Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's office said.

Netanyahu has instructed that the plane parts found on a beach in the coastal town of Netanya on Thursday be handed over to Egypt, he said.

Experts are still investigating the cause of the May 19 crash of the Airbus A320 which went down in the eastern Mediterranean on a flight from Paris to Cairo, killing all 66 people on board.

Investigators have said the plane's wreckage showed signs of fire, while a data recorder has confirmed that smoke alarms had been activated.