Officials search for cause of deadly plane crash over Egypt’s Sinai

A Russian passenger airliner crashed Saturday in a remote mountainous part Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula 23 minutes after taking off from a popular Red Sea resort, killing all 224 people on board, including 25 children. The cause of the crash was not known, but two major European airlines announced they would stop flying over the area for safety reasons after a local affiliate of the extremist Islamic State group claimed it “brought down” the aircraft. Moscow cast doubt on the claim, for which the militant group failed to provide any evidence.

The plane split into two, a small part on the tail end that burned and a larger part crashed into a rock.

An Egyptian security officer

The plane, operated by the Russian airline Kogalymavia, also known as Metrojet, took off from the Egyptian resort of Sharm el-Sheikh shortly before six am local time, bound for the Russian city of St Petersburg. It disappeared from radar screens some 23 minutes into the flight. The captain reportedly told air traffic control shortly after take-off that the plane had a technical fault and requested a change of route. Plane tracking websites showed the aircraft was flying at 31,000 ft before it suddenly dropped 5,000 ft in as little as a minute and disappeared from screens. The wreckage was found in the mountainous Hassana area, 22 miles (35km) south of the northern city of Arish.

Although hostile action has been dismissed I am absolutely certain that will be one of the focuses of investigators on the ground.

Mike Vivian, the former head of flight operations at the Civil Aviation Authority

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