Investigators have recovered the plane’s “black box” flight recorder and the Egyptian government said its contents were being analysed. Investigators say the way that the plane’s wreckage was scattered-in a pattern about 8 kilometers long and 4 kilometers wide-suggests that the disintegration happened in mid-air.
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Kogalymavia’s deputy general director for engineering, Andrei Averyanov, said damage from a 2001 incident when the plane’s tail section struck the tarmac on landing had been fully repaired and could not have been a factor in the crash.
The plane lost radar contact 23 minutes after taking off, and is believed to have exploded in mid-air over the Sinai Peninsula, where armed Islamist groups operate.
Still, the USA, Germany and Britain all had overflight warnings in place for the Sinai.
The warnings advised airlines to avoid flying over the Sinai Peninsula below 26,000 feet and to avoid the Sharm el-Sheik airport due to extremist violence and, notably, the use of anti-aircraft weapons with what the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration described as having the potential to reach high altitudes.
The cause of the Russian airliner crash in Egypt “could only have been an external impact on the plane” mid-air, a top official at the airline has said.
He told The Associated Press on Monday “that’s a very serious piece of equipment, and I don’t think they have that sophistication”. “The only possible explanation could be an external impact on the airplane”. “These are the two most probable hypotheses”.
Sabotage would require familiarity with the electrical or fuel systems of the A321-200, but hiding a bomb would need less knowledge, he added.
The plane’s operator has a spotty safety record and was rebranded recently in the wake of another deadly accident. “It’s too early to talk about conclusions”, he said on Russian television from Cairo.
An Egyptian official had previously said the pilot radioed that the plane was experiencing technical problems and he meant to try to land at the nearest airport.
At the crash site in Sinai, emergency workers and aviation experts from Russian Federation and Egypt swept across the barren terrain Monday, searching for more victims and examining the debris for more clues as to the cause of the crash.
A Russian minister, meanwhile, said Monday that the black boxes found from the plane were in good condition, according to AP. French, German and Airbus aviation teams are also helping the investigation.
A Russian government plane early Monday brought 130 bodies and 40 body parts of the victims to St. Petersburg, the destination of the crashed flight. The city, awash in grief for its missing residents, is holding three days of mourning through Tuesday.
Airport security sources said Russian experts who arrived on Saturday brought with them refrigerators and DNA samples to help identify and take home the dead.
The bodies were brought to St. Petersburg and delivered to the morgue for examination and investigation, the deputy head of the St. Petersburg branch of the Emergency Situations Ministry, Alexei Shupenko, told RIA Novosti.
People light candles in the memory of the victims, at the Palace Square in St Petersburg.
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President Vladimir Putin declared Sunday a nationwide day of mourning and flags flew at half-staff across the country.
