Experts say Russian plane broke up in the air

Black boxes being examined but still 'too early to draw conclusions' about Sinai crash.

Experts from Russia arrived at the site of the plane crash in Egypt’s Sinai peninsula on November 1, 2015, a day after the charter flight from Sharm El Sheikh to St Petersburg suddenly disappeared froShow more

WADI Al ZOLOMAT, Egypt, // The Russian plane that crashed in Egypt, killing all 224 people on board, broke up “in the air” an expert said on Sunday as investigators scrutinised evidence.

ISIL claimed responsibility for the incident, but Egyptian president Abdel Fattah El Sissi urged patience while the facts, and truth of what happened, were determined.

The A-321 plane went down in Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula.

“The disintegration happened in the air and the fragments are strewn over a large area,” said Viktor Sorochenko, a senior official with Russia’s interstate aviation committee.

Mr Sorochenko, who is heading an international panel of experts, said it was “too early to draw conclusions” about what caused the Sharm El Sheikh to Saint Petersburg flight to go down.

Russian officials said they needed to comb through an area of about 16 square kilometres in the Sinai Peninsula.

Investigators have recovered the plane’s black box flight recorder, and the Egyptian government said the contents were being analysed.

“In such cases, leave it to specialists to determine the cause of the plane crash because it is a subject of an extensive and complicated technical study,” Mr El Sisi said.

The crash site in the Wadi Al Zolomat area of North Sinai was littered with blackened parts of the plane and the smell of burnt metal lingered in the air.

There were no bodies visible at the site but a tiny red jacket, probably of a child, lay close to where soldiers were guarding baggage belonging to those on flight KGL 9268. There were 17 children on board.

On Sunday, rescue crews had recovered 168 bodies, including that of a girl found 8 kilometres from the main wreckage.

Flags flew at half mast in Russia on Sunday and entertainment programmes on television were cancelled as part of a national day of mourning. Most of the victims were Russian, ranging in age from 10 months to 77 years.

There were 214 Russian and three Ukranian passengers on board and seven crew members.

Cairo and Moscow have downplayed the claim from ISIL’s branch in Egypt that it brought down the aircraft flown by Kogalymavia airline, operating under the name Metrojet.

Egyptian prime minister Sharif Ismail confirmed that experts said ISIL could not down a plane at 9,000 metres altitude, at which the Airbus 321 was flying, while Russian transport minister Maxim Sokolov said the claim “cannot be considered accurate”.

Experts said the cause of the disaster could have been a number of things.

They said a surface-to-air missile could have struck the aircraft if it had been descending, a bomb on board could not yet be ruled out, or the cause being technical or human error.

Kogalymavia on Sunday defended pilot Valery Nemov, saying he had more than 12,000 hours of flying experience, including 3,860 hours on an Airbus A321.

Two air accident investigators from France – Airbus’s home country – and six experts from the aerospace company will take part in the official investigation.

What is known, is that the plane lost contact with air traffic control 23 minutes after take-off.

An Egyptian air traffic control official said the pilot told him in their last exchange that he had radio trouble, but civil aviation minister Mohamed Hossam Kamal said communications had been “normal”.

“There was nothing abnormal and the pilot didn’t ask to change the plane’s route,” he said.

A Russian team including Mr Sokolov and emergency minister Vladimir Puchkov visited the crash scene, in a remote part of the Sinai, on Sunday.

Russia has a dismal air safety record and while larger carriers have started to upgrade their ageing fleets the crash is likely to raise concerns about smaller airlines such as Kogalymavia.

Yesterday, the Russian transportation watchdog, Rostransnadzor, ordered Kogalymavia to perform a full check on their A-321 planes.

Kogalymavia confirmed the instructions but denied this amounted to a de-facto grounding of the company’s remaining six A321s.

Emirates, Lufthansa and Air France have halted flights over Sinai until the reasons behind the crash are clarified.

The last major air crash in Egypt was in 2004, when a Flash Airlines Boeing 737 plunged into the Red Sea after taking off from Sharm El Sheikh. All 148 people on board were killed.

* Agence France-Presse