As victims’ relatives prepared to receive remains of loved ones, Aleksandr Smirnov, deputy general director for the airline company Kogalymavia, which operates as Metrojet, said that the crash of the Airbus A321-200 could only have been the result of a few other “technical or physical action”.
Advertisement
The sign of a flash contradicts speculation that the commercial airliner was downed by a missile.
The U.S. intelligence community believes that a fuel tank or bomb may have been the source of the heat signature, NBC News reported. Though most of the day that followed was people spurning this suggestion, the US Director of National Intelligence James Clapper isn’t dismissing the idea so quickly.
Egypt on Saturday said that its initial assessment was that a technical error had caused the crash.
Emergency Situations Minister Vladimir Puchkov said in a televised news conference that another plane with more crash victims will travel from Cairo to St. Petersburg late Monday.
Investigators were set Tuesday to examine the black boxes from the Russian airliner that crashed in Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula, as President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi warned the probe would take time.
Several airlines, including Air France, Lufthansa, Dubai-based Emirates, and Qatar Airways have said they will stop flying over the Sinai peninsula for safety reasons.
The Russian airline Kogalymavia, which operated the plane under the brand name Metrojet, has blamed “external impact” for the crash of the Russian passenger plane. “ISIL had tweeted claims”, Clapper said, using an alternative acronym for Islamic State.
He said the plane lost speed and started descending rapidly, and the crew made no attempt to get in contact and report about the situation on board.
“There is a meeting taking place right now to try to find out everything that we know and if it’s not safe – if certain routes aren’t safe or certain things aren’t safe – of course we will act”, he told ITV.
A local affiliate of the extremist Islamic State group claimed it brought down the aircraft, but Russian officials would not comment citing the fact that investigations are ongoing.
Advertisement
People react as they look at a picture of the plane crash victims at Dvortsovaya (Palace) Square in St. Petersburg, Russia, on Monday, November 2, 2015.
