Airline official says ‘external impact’ to blame for jet crash
Print Edition
ONLY an external impact could have caused a Russian plane to dive into the Egyptian desert, killing all 224 people on board, Metrojet airline officials said yesterday, adding to a series of confusing statements from investigators that left unclear why the plane broke up in mid-flight.
“We rule out a technical fault of the plane or a pilot error,” Alexander Smirnov, deputy general director of Metrojet, told a news conference in Moscow.
“The only possible explanation could be an external impact on the airplane,” he said.
Russian aviation authorities were quick to chide the company for jumping the gun on the investigation, calling its comments premature.
Smirnov said the plane dropped 300kph in speed and 1.5 kilometers in altitude a minute before it crashed. However, when pressed for more details about the type of impact and what could have caused it, he insisted he was not at liberty to discuss details because the investigation was ongoing.
He also did not explain whether he meant something had hit the plane or that some external factor had caused the crash.
Smirnov described the A321-200 as a reliable aircraft that would not fall into a spin even if the pilots made a grave error because its automatic systems would correct crew mistakes.
The Airbus A321-200 was flying about 9,500 meters over the Sinai Peninsula when it crashed just 23 minutes after taking off from the Egyptian Red Sea resort of Sharm el-Sheikh en route to Saint Petersburg.
Asked about Metrojet’s claim of an external impact, the head of the Russian aviation agency, Alexander Neradko, decried Metrojet’s comments as “premature and not based on any real facts.”
He urged aviation experts “to refrain from drawing conclusions” at this stage.
Neradko, who spoke to Russian television in Cairo, said it will be possible to draw firm conclusions about the crash only after experts have studied fragments of the plane and the content of its black boxes.
He also said that Egyptian authorities will not begin studying the black boxes until representatives of all the involved parties arrive. This includes not only Russia, Egypt and Airbus but also experts from France, Germany and Ireland.
Viktor Yung, another deputy director general of Metrojet, said the crew didn’t send a distress call or contact traffic controllers before the crash. His comments contradicted those of an Egyptian official, who said the pilot radioed that the plane was experiencing technical problems and that he intended to land at the nearest airport.
An official at the Sharm el-Sheikh airport said yesterday that he stands by the report that air traffic control there had told him they received a distress call from the plane.
The large area over which plane debris fragments have been found indicates the jet disintegrated while flying at high altitude, Neradko said on Sunday. Yesterday, he once again refused to comment on any possible reason for the crash, citing the ongoing investigation.
When planes do break up in midair, experts say it is usually because of one of three factors: a catastrophic weather event, a collision or an external threat, such as a bomb or a missile.
An affiliate of the extremist Islamic State group claimed it brought down the aircraft, but Russian official dismissed the claim as not credible.
British military analyst Paul Beaver said he thought the crash was likely caused by a bomb on board, saying that IS doesn’t have a missile system that is capable of hitting a plane at such a high altitude.
“I’m pretty convinced that ISIS doesn’t have a ‘double-digit’ SAM (surface-to-air missile) that is necessary to go up as far as 31,000 feet,” he said.
A Russian cargo plane yesterday carried the first bodies of Russian victims killed in the crash to Saint Petersburg, where many of them are from. The city, awash in grief for its missing residents, is holding three days of mourning through today.
The government plane contained 130 bodies and 40 body parts that were whisked off to a city morgue and a crematorium, where Russian forensic experts immediately began working to try to identify the victims.
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