Smoke was detected on the doomed Egyptair plane shortly before it crashed over the Mediterranean Sea, the French air accident investigation agency BEA said today.
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“These messages do not allow in any way to say what may have caused smoke or fire on board the aircraft”, a spokesman for the agency said, adding that the messages indicated that smoke been detected towards the front of the cabin.
Egypt has deployed a submarine to search for the flight data recorders of the missing EgyptAir plane.
According to the president, the submarine moved on Sunday “in the direction of the plane crash site” and Egypt’s authorities “are working hard to salvage the black boxes”.
According to the Aviation Herald, smoke detectors had gone off in the toilet and the aircraft’s electronics before the signal was lost.
The Egyptian Armed Forces on Saturday morning released the first photos of debris from EgyptAir flight 804 recovered from the Mediterranean Sea.
Meanwhile, Egypt’s chief prosecutor Nabil Sadek says he has ordered an “urgent investigation” into crash.
Besides a fire, though, the signal could also be caused “by rapid decompression of the aircraft, which can produce condensation that the plane’s sensors could mistake for smoke”, industry analyst Robert W. Mann told The New York Times.
The spokesman, Brig-Gen. Mohammed Samir, later posted a brief video that showed more debris, including what appeared to be a piece of blue carpet, seat belts, a shoe and what looked like a woman’s white handbag.
“We’re looking at all possibilities”, he said.
Wreckage from the plane, luggage and body parts were found in the sea yesterday by an Egyptian military search team in an area about 290 kilometres (180 miles) north of the coastal city of Alexandria. In that case, the Sinai branch of the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, or ISIS, issued a claim of responsibility within hours.
Also Saturday, EgyptAir said that it had hired a foreign consultant to brief families on efforts to recover the victims, including DNA analysis.
The 56 passengers on board included one Briton, 30 Egyptians, 15 French, one Belgian, one Iraqi, one Kuwaiti, one Saudi Arabian, one Chadian, one Portuguese, one Algerian and one Canadian.
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A relative of a passenger who was flying aboard an EgyptAir plane that vanished from radar en route from Paris to Cairo overnight cries as family members are transported by bus to a gathering point at Cairo airport, May 19, 2016.
