But Russia’s top aviation official, Alexander Neradko, dismissed the company’s statement as premature and unfounded.
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Putin did not address speculation about the cause of the disaster, and the Kremlin said separately that it would be “improper” to comment before investigators had reported.
CNN aviation correspondent Richard Quest suggested that the Kogalymavia official could have meant something abnormal and out of the ordinary had occurred.
They’ve been fixtures on commercial flights around the world for decades. A Cairo official had earlier reported a distress call by the pilot but that hasn’t been authenticated. He added “It suddenly disappeared from the radar”. Metrojet said the jet underwent factory repairs and was safe to fly.
“At this point, a plane is on autopilot”.
Smirnov said the plane dropped 300 kmph in speed and 1.5 kilometers in altitude one minute before it crashed.
“It’s disturbing to me”.
“There is a very aggressive ISIL chapter in the Sinai”, he said.
Instead, tail strike repairs are examined during heavy maintenance checks that typically take place about every four to five years, he said.
Because the plane crashed in Egypt, authorities there are heading the investigation. It could have been a center fuel tank that might have exploded. Metrojet had been using the plane since 2012, according to Airbus, the plane’s maker.
A few have also pointed to a 2001 incident, when the Airbus 321’s tail section struck the tarmac on landing, as a possible cause of structural weakness. At the time, the aircraft was registered to the Lebanese carrier Middle East Airlines, registration records show.
Kogalymavia’s Andrei Averyanov said the plane had been damaged in 2001, but had most recently been thoroughly checked for cracks in 2013. “Our daughter had a telephone chat with him just before the flight”, Natalya Trukhacheva told Russia’s state-run NTV.
Cockpit recordings reveal “sounds uncharacteristic of routine flight”, according to a report from the Interfax news agency. The plane had 56,000 flight hours. If the plane’s engines become a focus of the investigation, the U.S. National Transportation Safety Board will likely dispatch a team to Egypt as well, a U.S official with knowledge of the investigation said.
There were 217 passengers and seven crew members on board Flight 9268. The overwhelming majority of the passengers were Russian holidaymakers flying home. Where the three other passengers were from was not disclosed.
Bodies recovered so far from the crash site are said to be mostly intact with no signs of major burn injuries. He did not identify the victims but said they were from the St. Petersburg suburbs and a neighboring region.
In this Russian Emergency Situations Ministry photo, made available on Monday, November 2, 2015, Russian Emergency Ministry experts work at the crash site of a Russian passenger plane bound for St. Petersburg in Russia that crashed in Hassana, Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula, on Monday, November 2, 2015.
Another plane bringing more bodies is expected to depart Egypt later Monday.
In his first public appearance since the crash, Putin described it as an “enormous tragedy” and said his thoughts are with the families of the victims. “These are complicated matters that require advanced technologies and wide investigations that might go on for months”, he said.
Al-Sisi has promised Putin that he will allow “the broadest possible participation of Russian experts in the investigation”, according to the Kremlin, and Russian officials have joined their Egyptian counterparts at the crash scene.
His spokesman, Dmitry Peskov, rejected any connection between the crash and the Russian military action in Syria, saying there is no reason to link them.
Aviation investigators from France and Germany, the countries where the plane was manufactured, are also taking part in the inquiry. “But we really don’t know and I think once the black boxes have been analyzed… then perhaps we’ll know more”. The cockpit voice recorder captures sounds on the flight deck that can include conversations between the pilots and warning noises from the aircraft. Russia’s aviation authority has said the devices, which could solve the mystery of what happened to the doomed jet, are in good condition.
Sinai has been a battleground between ISIS-affiliated militants and Egyptian security forces in recent years. The vicious conflict has killed hundreds of people.
Theories as to what happened to cause the plane carrying 224 people from Sharm el-Sheikh in Egypt to St. Petersburg in Russian Federation to crash Saturday range from mechanical failure to a terrorist bomb.
US officials refused to rule out that ISIS was responsible for bringing down the Metrojet flight in Egypt this weekend, citing a tweet from the terror group that claimed responsibility for the deadly crash.
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Neradko said “The Egyptian commission is conducting the investigation, and is giving no records and transcripts, be it of the flight recorders or on-ground recorders or radar data, to anyone”. But aviation and military experts believe the group does not have missiles that could have reached the plane’s altitude of 9,100 meters.
