Hallazgo confirmado EgyptAir MS804
AW | 2016 05 20 16:13 | AIR CRASH
EGYPTAIR MS804
Hallan restos humanos y parte del vuelo MS804 de Egyptair en el mar Mediterrráneo a 290 KM de Alejandría, Egipto
Treinta y seis horas después de la desaparición del avión, el ejército egipcio informó que encontraron restos y efectos personales de los pasajeros del vuelo de EgiptAir en el Mar Mediterráneo, a 290 kilómetros de Alejandría. Fue el ministro de defensa griego Panos Kammenos, quien informó que los egipcios encontraron “un miembro humano, dos asientos y varias valijas”, al sur del punto donde al avión habría caído, según su última señal emitida. Las autoridades griegas anunciaron que han hallado más elementos del avión, que van a ser recogidos por barcos, sin dar precisiones.
«El comité de crisis de Egipto nos ha informado de la recuperación de una parte de un cuerpo, uno o dos asientos y algunos fragmentos de valijas», señaló Kammenos en declaraciones a la emisora televisiva ERT.«Nosotros no hemos encontrado nada. Egipto está al mando de la operación», agregó.
También se informó que uno de los satélites de la Agencia Espacial Europea (ESA) avistó una mancha de combustible en el Mediterráneo, en un área que coincide con el lugar donde se habría estrellado el avión.
Las familias de las victimas, que viajaron mayoritariamente a El Cairo invitadas por el gobierno egipcio, han tomado la declaración “con precaución”, después de las confirmaciones y desmentidas de la compañía aérea ayer y las diferentes versiones. La caja negra, que puede contener el secreto de lo que pasó en el avión en su caída, aún no ha sido encontrada.
Un avión egipcio busca restos en el mar Mediterráneo. / AP
Un vocero del Ejército dijo que” aviones y barcos egipcios han encontrado efectos personales de los pasajeros y partes del avión a 290 kilómetros al norte de Alejandría”. EgyptAir había informado anoche que se habían descubierto partes azules y blancas del avión para luego retractarse.
Los militares griegos habían admitido encontrar restos del avión ayer a 40 millas náuticas de la isla de Creta. Pero el vicepresidente de EgyptAir dijo que “no pertenecen a nuestro avión”.
Seguridad aeroportuaria revisa un avión de Egyptair tras aterrizar en El Cairo. / Reuters
Los investigadores egipcios, encabezados por Ayman El Mokadam, más los investigadores enviados por Francia , Gran Bretaña y los expertos de Airbus se aprestan a revisar los hallazgos. No hay precisiones sobre los restos encontrados aún. Un avión Falcon francés continúa volando, apoyado por un C130 británico con mecanismo y micrófonos de detección, y aviones norteamericanos en busca de más objetos.
Francia también aportó material para búsqueda submarino en un intento de saber que pasó y cómo recuperar los cuerpos de los 66 pasajeros a bordo.
El vuelo MS804
Encontraron “un miembro humano, dos asientos y varias valijas”, según informó Atenas. El ejército egipcio confirmó que halló los objetos a 290 km de Alejandría.
Hasta ahora ningún grupo terrorista ha reivindicado ser el autor de un atentado en el avión. Rusos, americanos y oficiales egipcios se inclinan por la teoría del atentado antes que por una falla mecánica. La hipótesis de un ataque terrorista es privilegiada también por los expertos en accidentes y recogida por toda la prensa europea.
Si bien la hipótesis de inclinan por esta posibilidad, el canciller francés Jean Marc Ayrault mostró cautela para analizar las causas. “No hay ninguna indicación de lo que ha causado la caída. Estamos viendo todas las posibilidades. Pero ninguna está favorecida sobre otras porque no hay indicaciones de las causas” dijo el canciller esta mañana.
El presidente egipcio Abdel Fattah al Sisi emitió un comunicado de condolencias, tras conocerse el hallazgo de los restos, donde “lamenta y llora las víctimas a bordo del Egypt Air, que murieron después que el avión cayera en el Mar Mediterráneo en su regreso a El Cairo desde París”.
El aparato, uno de los más seguros de Airbus, había hecho cuatro escalas en Asmara( Eritrea), Túnez, Cairo, antes de llegar a París con 66 pasajeros a bordo y tres Marshalls de seguridad egipcios en su interior. El vuelo donde cayó era su quinto viaje en las últimas 32 horas.
Policías franceses patrullan una terminal del aeropuerto parisino de Charles de Gaulle. / Bloomberg
En Francia , el foco está ahora en la seguridad del aeropuerto Charles de Gaulle y los que estuvieron en contacto con el vuelo MS804, su servicio de comida, combustible, limpieza y equipaje. En noviembre pasado se les retiró a 82 empleados los pases a la pista y el aeropuerto, tras una investigación por “radicalización islámica”. Los islamistas habían querido reclutar por meses empleados del aeropuerto, que en un 40 por ciento, provienen de los suburbios de París. La terminal aérea es la principal empleadora de esa zona. 
EgyptAir Flight 804: Seats, suitcases and remains found
Some seats and aircraft parts. Personal belongings, including suitcases. And what’s described as body parts. That’s what EgyptAir and Greek officials say searchers have found so far in the effort to locate EgyptAir Flight 804, which is believed to have crashed early Thursday into the Mediterranean Sea while flying from Paris to Cairo.
Greek Defense Minister Panos Kammenos relayed the Egyptian discovery of the body part, seats and suitcases at a news conference Friday, citing Egyptian officials. Later, the airline issued a statement saying more remains, personal belongings and aircraft seats had been discovered. Those announcements followed one from the Egyptian military, which said it had found parts of the aircraft and passenger belongings about 290 kilometers (180 miles) north of the coastal city of Alexandria, Egypt.
«The searching, sweeping and the retrieval process is underway,» Egyptian military spokesman Brig. Gen. Mohammad Samir said. Kammenos also said it appears that aircraft crews participating in the search «have located further findings in a different location.»
«But we do not have as yet an official announcement if these findings do have to do with the particular aircraft,» he said.
The plane was carrying 56 passengers and 10 crew members and security when it left Charles de Gaulle Airport in Paris late Wednesday night.
It disappeared from radar early Thursday as it flew to Cairo — what should have been about a 3½-hour flight.
Egyptian officials say they suspect terrorism.
Confusion over debris
On Thursday, the airline’s vice chairman said wreckage of the plane had been found at sea, but those initial reports turned out to be false. When searchers got close to the debris, they realized it was not from the missing airliner, EgyptAir’s Ahmed Adel said. Hours after Adel retracted his statement, the military announced the sighting of the wreckage Friday. «The presidency, with utmost sadness and regret, mourns the victims on aboard the EgyptAir flight who were killed after the plane crashed in the Mediterranean,» the Egyptian presidency said in a statement. The airline also expressed its condolences. «EgyptAir sincerely conveys its deepest sorrow to the families and friends of the passengers onboard Flight MS804,» it tweeted.
What went wrong?
While no theory has been completely ruled out, speculation on what caused the flight to crash centered on the possibility of a terror attack. At some point before dropping off radar, the plane swerved 90 degrees to the left and then made a 360-degree turn to the right before plunging first to 15,000 feet, then 10,000 feet, and disappearing from radar, Greek officials said.
That sudden change in what had been an uneventful flight is why Egyptian officials are focusing on terror as the likely cause, a senior Egyptian official told CNN on Friday. «The nature of the way the plane went down the way it veered and then fell out of the sky leads us to believe this,» the official said. What Greek officials described as swerving was likely pieces of the aircraft being picked up on radar as they fell from the sky, U.S. officials told CNN on Thursday. As of now, investigators have found nothing implicating the flight crew or security officials aboard the plane, the Egyptian official said Friday.
What happened? Four scenarios
Miles O’Brien, a CNN aviation analyst, said that «it’s very difficult to come up with a scenario that jibes with some sort of catastrophic failure. (The evidence so far) leads us down the road to a deliberate act.»
French officials urged caution, saying it’s still too early to draw conclusions. «All assumptions are reviewed, but none is favored,» Foreign Minister Jean-Marc Ayrault told France 2 network Friday. «We have absolutely no indication on the causes of this event.» Ayrault said his Egyptian counterpart, Sameh Shoukry, was not leaning toward terrorism as the cause of the crash.
Controllers tried to reach pilot
Shortly before the aircraft was scheduled to exit Greek airspace early Thursday, controllers tried to reach the pilots to transfer control to Cairo authorities. Despite repeated attempts, they received no response, Greece’s Hellenic Civil Aviation Authority said.
Radar soon lost the plane’s signal just after it entered Egyptian airspace, the authority said.The Airbus A320 «swerved and then plunged» before descending into the Mediterranean, said Kammenos, the Greek defense minister. Is flying more dangerous than ever?
Passengers and crew
Most of the passengers were Egyptian — 30 in all. But also aboard were 15 French citizens, including an infant. There were also passengers from Iraq, Britain, Belgium, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, Sudan, Chad, Portugal, Canada and Algeria, according to the Egyptian aviation minister.
Canada said two of its citizens were on the plane. Australian Foreign Minister Julie Bishop said the British passenger had Australian citizenship as well. It is unclear whether any other passengers were dual citizens.
The search
Greece, France, the United States and other nations were searching about 130 nautical miles southeast of the Greek island of Karpathos, Greek aviation officials said. The United States has three P-3 Orion aircraft involved in the search, the U.S. Naval Forces Europe said on its website, with more expected to relieve them throughout Friday and into Saturday. Greece has offered the nations involved in the search the use of military bases on the island of Crete, Greek Defense Ministry spokeswoman Jorgo Poulos said.
The European Space Agency said Friday that its Sentinel-1A satellite had spotted a 2-kilometer (1.24-mile) oil slick near where the plane is believed to have crashed. The agency said it’s possible the slick could be from another source. The crucial cockpit voice recorder and flight data recorder haven’t been located. As crews searched, somber relatives gathered in Cairo and Paris airports, seeking word on their loved ones.
The investigation
The Egyptian Civil Aviation Ministry has formed an investigative committee to look into the crash of EgyptAir Flight 804. It will be led by Ayman al-Moqadem, the investigator who is also heading up the inquiry into the October crash of a Russian Metrojet airliner over the Sinai, the agency said in a statement. That disaster, which killed all 224 aboard, is widely believed to be the work of terrorists.
Earlier Friday, three French technical safety investigators and a technical expert from airplane manufacturer Airbus arrived in Cairo to help with the investigation, according to the French Embassy in Egypt.
The investigators are from France’s Office of Investigations and Analysis, which investigates aviation accidents. The investigation will include looking at the aircraft’s flight crew as well as the ground crew members and anyone who had access to the plane in Paris, U.S. officials told CNN.
French investigators will focus on that aspect first, the U.S. officials predicted. It will be up to Egyptian officials to scrutinize the crew, security and passengers on the flight, the officials said. Investigators looking at the wreckage will want first to locate the nose, tail and wings of the aircraft, Deborah Hersman, a former chairwoman of the National Transportation Safety Board, told CNN on Thursday. «They are going to be looking to check those control surfaces to make sure that they are intact, and certainly if there is any sign of an explosion or foul play, they are going to look for markers of that,» Hersman said.
The flight data recorder and cockpit voice recorder will also be key, she said. «The flight data recorder is going to have potentially hundreds or a thousand parameters, everything from speed and direction to kind of control surface positions,» she said. «The cockpit voice recorder can be tremendously helpful because they can hear the communication not just between air traffic control and the pilots, (but also) between the pilots and each other, between the pilots and cabin crew.»
Other developments
— The pilots were identified as Mohamed Said Shoukair, the plane’s captain, and first officer Mohamed Mamdouh Ahmed Assem, according to an official close to the investigation and a security source.
— The head flight attendant was identified as Mirvat Zaharia Zaki Mohamed.
— The plane’s captain had about 6,000 flying hours, EgyptAir’s Adel said. Maintenance checks on the plane had reported «no snags.»
— Checks of the passenger manifest have so far resulted in no hits on terror watch lists, officials with knowledge of the investigation said.
— An initial theory is that the plane was downed by a bomb, two U.S. officials told CNN. Officials said the theory could change, with one senior administration official cautioning it is not yet supported by a «smoking gun.»
— The jet had routine maintenance checks in Cairo before it left for Paris, the airline said. Earlier Wednesday, the jet was also in Eritrea and Tunisia, data from flight tracking websites show.
— The plane has been part of EgyptAir’s fleet since November 2003, according to Adel.
A timeline of major plane crashes. ᴀᴡ
AW | 2016 03 12 19:18 | AIR INVESTIGATION / AVIATION SAFETY
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