That’s a sign that investigators will soon be closer to figuring out what happened, said Alan Diehl, a former accident investigator for the U.S. National Transportation Safety Board, the Federal Aviation Administration and the U.S. Air Force.
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“We don’t have any direct evidence of any terrorist involvement yet”, Clapper said at a conference in Washington, D.C., according to the Wall Street Journal.
The crash, in Egypt’s Sinai peninsula on Saturday, could only have been the result of a few other “technical or physical action” which caused it to break up in the air and plummet to the ground, said Alexander Smirnov, deputy general director of the airline, Kogalymavia.
Militants claiming affiliation to the Islamic State said they shot down jet.
Analysis of the black box recorders, which could solve the mystery of what brought down the plane, is expected to begin on Tuesday according to Egyptian officials.
Metrojet’s Airbus A321-200 en route from Egypt’s Sharm el-Sheikh to St. Petersburg crashed over the Sinai Peninsula on Tuesday, killing all 224 on board.
“But as I say we must do it on the basis of evidence and not on speculation”.
Egyptian activists stand in front of the Russian embassy while holding placards in solidarity with the Russian passengers who died in Saturday’s plane crash over Sinai, in Cairo, Egypt, November 1, 2015.
Islamist militants in Sinai are not thought to have the military hardware that would enable them to bring down a plane at 30,000 feet, the altitude the Airbus 321 was flying at before it was hit. Rescue workers have found 12 large pieces of the plane’s hull at the crash site, indicating how badly it was damaged in the incident, Russian officials reported.
The pilot did not make a distress call before it disappeared from radar, a source said, citing a preliminary examination of the recovered black box.
Alexander Neradko, head of Russia’s aviation authority, criticized the airline’s comments as “premature and not based on any real facts”.
Prime Minister David Cameron said people should not stop flying to the popular Red Sea resort because of the company’s claims.
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Metrojet firmly denied that the crash could have been caused by either equipment failure or crew error.
