EgyptAir flight from Paris to Cairo crashed in 2016, killing all 66 people on board.
April 26, 2022
When the Airbus A320 disappears the
first thought is to a terrorist attack.
Airbus A320, registered SU-GCC, died
when it crashed into the Mediterranean Sea. Egyptian authorities have never
published a final report into the crash.
French air accident investigators
from the BEA stated on July 6, 2018 that they considered “the most likely
hypothesis is that a fire broke out in the cockpit while the airplane was
flying at its cruise altitude and that the fire spread rapidly resulting in the
loss of control of the airplane.”
The captain or first officer had been
smoking at 37,000ft shortly before the crash.
In a 134-page official report, which
was sent to the Court of Appeal in Paris last month, investigators said the
fire may have broken out in the cockpit due a combination of a lit cigarette
and the escape of oxygen from the co-pilot’s mask.
The fire started after the pilot's
lit cigarette combined with leaked oxygen, the report said.
A 134-page document submitted to the
Court of Appeals in Paris last month said investigators determined that the
burning cigarette combined with escaping oxygen from the co-pilot's mask and
caused a fire on board Flight 804.
The French air accident investigation
agency had said previously that a cockpit fire likely caused the crash;
Egyptian authorities initially claimed it was a terrorist bombing.
The French BEA air accident
investigation agency has previously said the crash was probably caused by a
cockpit fire, contradicting an earlier suggestion by Egyptian authorities that
a bomb may have been the cause.
It also said that authorities in
Egypt had apparently not followed up calls for further investigations.
{ID:L8N1U306X]
The two experts commissioned by
French judges in charge of the dossier highlighted some twenty warnings
pointing to recurring faults during the plane's five flights before the crash.
Before disappearing from radar — and
shortly after leaving Greek airspace — flight MS804 signals through the
automatic system the presence of smoke in the front bathroom and in the lower
part of the nose. Pilots do not launch any may days. The Airbus A320 is one of
the most used and safe aircraft in the world. Thousands fly every day. But six
years after that tragedy, the Egyptian authorities — leading the investigation
by jurisdiction — have never produced any final investigation report, as advocated
by international treaties. And not even preliminary.
Above
Italy
At 00.11 on May 19, the jet enters
Italian airspace over Livigno, a few minutes later it leaves the country from
Veneto, then skirts all the Balkans and proceeds further and further south. At
01.24 — reconstruct the tracks of the specialized site Flightradar24 — he
enters Greek airspace, but an hour later neither the Greek controller nor the
Egyptian one manage to get in touch. At 2.30 am the Airbus disappears from the
radars of both area control centers after turning a couple of times first to
the left, then immediately to the right.
The
seven signals
Shortly before sinking, it turns out
later, the plane sent seven "dispatches" in just two seconds through
the "Acars", a data communication system with the ground stations:
they signal problems with the anti-icing sensors, the windows of the cockpit,
the presence of smoke in the front bathroom and in the avionics compartment
(under the cockpit), the stop to the operation of two computer systems crucial
for flight and the one that maneuvers the wings. Neither the commander nor the
first officer mentions it or asks for assistance.
The
start of the investigation
Relations with the Egyptians are
immediately problematic. The incident, for Cairo, is an act of terrorism and
for this reason the investigation requires the acts to be secreted. The
transalpine authorities find it difficult to support these theses. The dynamics
of the recovered debris around the impact area, according to Western experts,
excludes the explosion at altitude. The truth lies in the two black boxes,
found and analyzed in the laboratories near Paris of the investigative body
French Bea. But the intergovernmental agreement provides that Bea cannot
disclose the information because it is not responsible for the investigation. A
search warrant from the French judiciary is needed to obtain the data of the
black boxes that remain known only to very few people. "From the Egyptians
we received only the ritual condolences and the remains of our loved ones. Then
the silence,"
The
counter-investigation
A 76-page document, prepared between
2018 and 2019 by two French experts, claims that in the five previous flights
that aircraft recorded about twenty warnings for more or less important
technical problems – from the air intake system into the engines to the smoke
detection sensors on board – "which, however, were not reported by the
pilots and therefore not analyzed by EgyptAir maintenance", it reads.
Egyptian civil aviation denies the existence of technical problems.
"Before its penultimate flight (from Cairo to Paris, ed) the plane should
not have taken off without extensive control," the two experts write.
However, they conclude that it is not possible to identify a root cause.
The
French version
A spokesman for Bea explains that the official position of the investigative body French
remains that of July 6, 2018. With a press note – at times very harsh – the
agency claims that "the most likely hypothesis of the accident is that it
was caused by a fire that broke out in the cockpit during the cruise phase,
which spread quickly leading to the loss of control of the aircraft". Bea
also points out that "it is necessary to have a final report of the
incident in order to be able to present the differences of opinion to the
Egyptians as established by international norms". Having this document
also serves to improve safety in the sector as it always happens after every
tragedy of the skies.
Without effective cooperation from
Egypt, without being able to hear the people involved in the maintenance, it
becomes almost impossible to get to the bottom of this story."
Traces
of oxygen
Separating the sound tracks of one of
the black boxes, the "Cockpit voice recorder", the experts discover
two rustles at 2.25 and 24 seconds and at 2.25 and 29 that come from the
microphone embedded in the oxygen mask of the co-pilot who at that moment is in
his compartment. Then two more blows, at 2.26 and 11 and at 2.26 and 24. Oxygen
itself is not flammable, but promotes combustion. For this reason, immediately
afterwards there is a principle of fire unleashed "by a spark or a
flame". The finger is pointed at a lit cigarette, the umpteenth in that
aircraft if it is true that two months earlier in the cockpit the ashtrays were
replaced because they were now too used. The document cannot determine whether
the pilots used a fire extinguisher or not.
The
checks envisaged
"When we enter the cockpit among
the various preliminary checks before taking off there is also that of
controlling the flow of oxygen in the side masks", explains Daniele
Veronelli, commander of A320 and member of the technical department of Anpac
(National Association of Commercial Aviation Pilots) to the Courier. "You
raise a door and test the air flow by pressing a button that pops out of the
compartment. By operating the intercom you can feel the oxygen flowing because
each mask is equipped with a microphone». If the crew is the first to set foot
in the plane that day - he continues - "then this type of test is also
carried out. If, on the other hand, you take over from your colleagues, the
control is not provided, but nothing detracts from the fact that this is
performed the same, it takes a few seconds».
Alarms
Are there oxygen signals on board? "When
the levels drop, in one of the screens in front of the pilots the indication of
the amount of oxygen is colored orange. If you are on the ground you do not
take off, if you are in flight you have to decide whether to continue or divert
to the nearest airport». The masks have a minimum of 15 minutes of autonomy.
"There is a lever: if it is in the normal position the flow of oxygen is
on demand. If, on the other hand, it is in the "emergency" position
then it releases the air at a greater pressure to throw out of the mask the
fumes that could enter in case of fire or smoke on board.
The
tiredness of the pilots
In the document, among many things,
there is a passage about pilots. Between 1.01 and 1.46 at night — when the
aircraft passes between the coast of Croatia and over Athens, Greece — the
technicians note, hearing the black boxes, that the commander and first officer
show signs of fatigue. "A yawn is clearly audible at 1.01 and 53
seconds," it reads. Twelve minutes later "pilot and co-pilot clearly
express that both feel tired from this night flight and lack of sleep."
Same concept repeated at 1.46. But the documents compiled, the experts explain,
"indicate that the rest times for both have been respected".
ICAO, the UN civil aviation agency,
explains that it has not received any final report from Cairo. Bea, the
investigative agency French, confirms the position expressed in 2018: for them
the most likely hypothesis remains "a fire that broke out in the cockpit
during the cruise phase that led to the loss of control of the jet".
