EgyptAir flight broke up in mid air after a fire, evidence suggests

CAIRO — Evidence gathered in an investigation into the crash of EgyptAir Flight 804 in the Mediterranean Sea in May indicates that the plane most likely broke up in midair after a fire near or inside the cockpit that quickly overwhelmed the crew, according to Egyptian officials involved in the enquiry.

But the officials could not determine whether the fire thought to have caused the crash had been set off by a mechanical malfunction or by a malicious act.

The findings are based on information from the Airbus A320’s flight data recorder and cockpit voice recorder — commonly known as black boxes — along with an analysis of the condition and distribution of recovered debris, including human remains, according to forensic and aviation officials in Cairo. The officials spoke this week on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorised to discuss the investigation publicly.

The officials said the evidence appeared to be sufficient to rule out at least one early theory: that a pilot had deliberately flown the plane into the water.

Flight 804 plummeted from 37,000 feet during an overnight flight to Cairo from Paris on May 19, killing all 66 people on board. The early findings that it disintegrated in the air, rather than upon hitting the water, may be presented in a preliminary report on the crash in the coming days.

Since the discovery of the wreckage last month, investigators and search teams have been mapping the debris field on the ocean floor, roughly 10,000 feet below the surface, with specialised underwater cameras, and the human remains that have been found were sent to a morgue in Cairo for analysis.

Among the largest items recovered so far are aircraft seats, an aviation official briefed on the investigation said. Other items include window panes and door handles.

No complete bodies have been retrieved, and almost none of the discovered remains were strapped into seats, the officials said. One forensic specialist estimated that search teams had found only a few remains, less than 70 pounds in all.

According to air-accident experts who are not involved in the EgyptAir enquiry, the absence of large debris and a relatively wide dispersal of objects along the ocean floor indicate that the plane broke up in the air, although they do not explain what might have caused that to occur.

A plane that fractures on impact with water typically leaves significant clusters of heavy debris, including sections of fuselage, wings and other large, identifiable parts such as engines or landing gear. The lack of intact human remains is another indicator of a midair breakup, experts said.

“The bodies will tell us a story, just like the aircraft does,” Mr Frank Ciaccio, a former forensic investigator for the US National Transportation Safety Board, said in an interview last month.

“If you see large fragmentation of remains, you generally look to see if that is consistent with an explosion or an in-flight disruption,” Mr Ciaccio said. “Typically, if they are scattered about, that is a good indication of in-flight breakup.”

An Egyptian aviation official said the voice recorder from the cockpit indicated that the mood there was relaxed in the minutes before the plane veered off course.

Crew members were playing music and chatting amiably when the pilot, Captain Muhammad Shoukair, 36, suddenly said there was a fire on board and asked the co-pilot, Muhammad Mamdouh Assem, 24, to get an extinguisher. That was the last human sound the recorder captured.

Information from the flight data recorder — as well as a series of automated alerts that were sent by the plane to a maintenance base on the ground — suggests that, in the minutes before radar contact was lost, heavy smoke was detected in a lavatory as well as near the cockpit. Investigators have also retrieved blackened pieces of metal from the front of the plane that indicate a high-temperature fire.

Still, the source of such a fire remains unclear. After the 1996 crash of TWA Flight 800, which broke up in midair shortly after takeoff from Kennedy International Airport in New York City, investigators initially suspected terrorism. But an extensive enquiry determined that the probable cause was an electrical short-circuit that had ignited vapours in the plane’s main fuel tank.

Mr Safwat Musallam, the chairman of EgyptAir, a state-owned carrier, declined to comment on the latest findings, but in an interview last month, he said, “It is clearly terrorism.”

Noting the crash of a Russian jet over the Sinai Peninsula in October, which killed 224 people, and the hijacking of an EgyptAir flight in March by an Egyptian fugitive, he added, “I would have to be crazy not to see the pattern here.”

But Mr Musallam acknowledged that his terrorism theory was not backed up by evidence. The recent crashes have damaged Egypt’s tourism industry. If mechanical or human failure is found to have played a role in the Flight 804 crash, it would threaten business for the carrier. NEW YORK TIMES