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Infrared Satellite Detects Flash Near Site Of Russian Metrojet Crash The new evidence suggests an onboard explosion may have downed the airliner, killing 224. New evidence suggests an onboard explosion may have caused a Russian Metrojet airliner to break apart and crash in Egypt's Sinai peninsula over the weekend. Infrared satellite images released by U.S. officials to NBC News show a heat flash near the location of the crash that killed all 224 passengers, the network reported. The sign of a flash contradicts speculation that the commercial airliner was downed by a missile. Instead, intelligence analysts told NBC, it suggests that the explosion may have originated on board the plane. "The speculation that this plane was brought down by a missile is off the table," the official told NBC. Russian officials expressed doubt after an Islamic State affiliate claimed responsibility for the crash, arguing that the terrorist organization likely lacks sophisticated weaponry needed to shoot down a plane from an altitude of 31,000 feet. "It's unlikely, but I wouldn't rule it out," the U.S. director of national intelligence, James Clapper, said of terrorist involvement. Meanwhile, the Russian airline on Monday denied that mechanical failure or pilot error could have caused the crash. "The only possible explanation could be an external impact on the airplane," said Alexander Smirnov, Metrojet's deputy director. Russia's top aviation official chided the company for "jumping the gun" on ruling out mechanical or pilot error. Some airlines, including Emirates, Lufthansa and Air France-KLM, have rerouted flights to avoid flying over Egypt's Sinai Peninsula until the investigation determines a cause. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/metrojet-crash-infrared-satellite_56380b8de4b00a4d2e0ba8d7 Back to Top

Russian plane crash: Theories on why jet disintegrated in midair Investigators do not know why the plane carrying 224 people broke apart midair   (CNN)The theories on what may have brought down Metrojet Flight 9268 run the gamut, from a fuel tank explosion to a missile from the ground. Russian officials say it's too soon to tell what made the passenger jet plunge to the ground Saturday, killing all 224 people on board. Aviation experts agree, and officials have downplayed an apparent claim by Islamic militants that they brought down the Airbus A321-200, saying technical failure is the most likely reason for the crash. Here's the latest on what we know: The flight Flight 9268 was on its way from the Egyptian resort of Sharm el-Sheikh to St. Petersburg early Saturday when it dropped off radar about 23 minutes into the flight, Egyptian officials say.   Air traffic controllers apparently didn't receive any distress calls. "There was nothing abnormal before the plane crash," Egyptian Civil Aviation Minister Hossam Kamel said Saturday. "It suddenly disappeared from the radar." The website Flightradar24, which tracks aircraft around the world, said it had received data from the Russian plane suggesting sharp changes in altitude and a dramatic decrease in ground speed before the signal was lost. The crash A U.S. satellite that was over Sinai at the time of the crash detected a heat flash, according to a U.S. official directly familiar with the latest information in the investigation.   U.S. intelligence and military officials are analyzing the data to determine whether the flash occurred in midair or on the ground and what that can tell them about what happened to the plane, the official said. Analysts say heat flashes could be tied to a range of possibilities: a missile firing, a bomb blast, a malfunctioning engine exploding, a structural problem causing a fire on the plane or wreckage hitting the ground. "The number of heat signatures is crucial," said CNN aviation analyst Miles O'Brien. "If, in fact, only one was detected, that in some respects might steer one away from a missile launch and onto some idea of an explosion onboard the aircraft." A top Russian aviation official has said the plane broke apart in midair. Metrojet official Alexander Smirnov said the airline had ruled out technical problems and human error. Protection systems on the plane would have prevented it from crashing, he said, even if there were major errors in the pilot's control equipment. CNN aviation analyst Peter Goelz said the disaster could have resulted from "some sort of catastrophic failure, perhaps caused by an earlier maintenance problem. It could have been a center fuel tank that might have exploded." The plane The A321-200 was built in 1997, and the airline company Kogalymavia, which flies under the name Metrojet, had been operating it since 2012, Airbus said. The aircraft had clocked around 56,000 flight hours over the course of nearly 21,000 flights, the plane maker said. And so far, officials have said all its inspections were in order. The aircraft passed a routine inspection before takeoff, Egyptian Airports Co. chief Adel Al-Mahjoob said Saturday. According to the Aviation Safety Network, which tracks aircraft incidents, the same plane's tail struck a runway while landing in Cairo in 2001 and required repair. At the time, the aircraft was registered to the Lebanese carrier Middle East Airlines, registration records show. Kogalymavia's Andrei Averyanov said the plane had been damaged in 2001, but had most recently been thoroughly checked for cracks in 2013. Not enough time had passed for major cracks to develop to a critical size since then, he said. Smirnov said that he had personally flown the plane in recent months and that it was "pristine." The victims There were 217 passengers and seven crew members on board Flight 9268. Of the passengers, 209 were Russian, four were Ukrainian and one was Belarusian. The citizenships of three other passengers are unknown. Russian media reported that the disaster created a large number of orphans in Russia, as a lot of parents left their young children with relatives while they took vacations in Sharm el-Sheikh. 'Tragedy to lose so many children' Most of the bodies retrieved at the crash site are intact, a medical source in Sinai told CNN on Monday, and showed no major burns. The investigation Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi has promised Russian President Vladimir Putin that he will allow "the broadest possible participation of Russian experts in the investigation," according to the Kremlin. Russian officials have joined their Egyptian counterparts at the crash scene. Putin has also ordered a Russian investigation, the Kremlin said. Aviation investigators from France and Germany, the countries where the plane was manufactured, are also taking part. The aircraft's engines were manufactured in the United States. If the plane's engines become a focus of the investigation, the U.S. National Transportation Safety Board will likely dispatch a team to Egypt as well, a U.S official with knowledge of the investigation said.   The plane's black boxes, which were recovered at the crash site Saturday, have not yet been read or decoded, Smirnov said. The Region Sharm el-Sheikh, where Flight 9268 began its journey, is a beach resort dotted with palm trees at the southern tip of the Sinai Peninsula. The plane crashed about 300 kilometers (185 miles) farther north, near a town called Housna, according to Egyptian authorities. The Sinai Peninsula has been a battleground between ISIS-affiliated militants and Egyptian security forces. The conflict has killed hundreds of people. Is it safe to fly over war zones? How low can planes go? The militants appeared to claim responsibility for bringing down the Russian passenger jet in a statement posted online Saturday, but officials in Egypt and Russia disputed it. Mahjoob, the airport official, said there was no evidence of a terrorist attack. And Russian Transport Minister Maxim Sokolov said the claim that terrorists brought down the plane with an anti-aircraft missile "cannot be considered reliable," according to RIA Novosti. The Egyptian military said militants in Sinai have shoulder-fired, anti-aircraft weapons that shoot only as high as 14,000 feet, far short of the more than 30,000 feet at which Flight 9268 was flying when it dropped off radar. Metrojet executives also said Monday that it was too early in the investigation to speculate or draw any conclusions. But Smirnov referred to purported footage of the crash posted by militants, saying: "Those images you have seen on the Internet; I think they are fake." http://www.cnn.com/2015/11/03/africa/russian-plane-crash-egypt-sinai/ Back to Top

Downed Russian Jet Suffered Prior Damage Linked to Other Crashes Alan Levin   An airplane part is seen as the Egyptian officials inspect the crash site of Russian Airliner in Suez, Egypt. More than a decade before it burst into pieces mid-air, the Russian jetliner that crashed in Egypt on Saturday scraped its tail on a runway during landing and needed to be repaired. Investigators poring over wreckage of the Metrojet Airbus Group SE A321 in Egypt's Sinai peninsula will be taking a close look at a 2001 repair to the plane's tail because it is one of the few things known to cause the type of sudden midair breakup that occurred Saturday, said John Goglia, a former airline mechanic who served on the U.S. National Transportation Safety Board. Metrojet tail section remains "If the engineering is done right, it's not an issue. If the repair follows the engineering data, it's not an issue," said Goglia, who isn't involved in the Metrojet investigation. "But a breakdown in any one of those can and has resulted in catastrophic failures." Impacts between the rear of a plane and the ground during landing and takeoff -- known as "tail strikes" -- occur with some regularity, according to National Transportation Safety Board data. Since 2000, there have been at least 22 tail strikes that caused severe enough damage to warrant an investigation by the safety board, according to its online accident database. Goglia estimates there were 10 times more tail strikes than listed in the NTSB database but the cases weren't reported to the accident-investigation agency because they were minor. In a small number of cases, however, such repairs have failed so violently that planes split at the seams and crashed. If it's found that the 2001 repair on the Metrojet aircraft played a role in the accident, investigators will want to ensure that there are no repairs on other aircraft at risk of failing, Goglia said. They would typically review the plans for repairs and may even seek inspections of other repairs, he said. 224 Dead All 224 people aboard the Metrojet, flying from Sharm el-Sheikh to St. Petersburg, died when it went down. Because debris was spread over an area as much as 8 kilometers (5 miles) long, officials believe it had to have broken up in flight, Alexander Neradko, head of the Russian Federal Aviation Authority, said in an interview with Rossiya-24 state television. Part of the tail section on the Metrojet plane landed apart from other wreckage, indicating it broke off from the rest of the fuselage. The plane's tail had been properly repaired, Andrey Averyanov, deputy general director for engineering at Kogalymavia, which operates under the Metrojet brand, said at a briefing in Moscow Monday. The plane, which was operated by another airline at the time, was repaired by Airbus in Toulouse, France, said Averyanov. Other Factors It's too early to focus on a single possible cause, Steve Wallace, former chief of the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration's accident investigation division, said in an interview. Investigators will be looking at factors including bombs, missiles, other on-board explosions and structural corrosion, Wallace said. If the dome-shaped rear pressure bulkhead, which holds in air behind the plane's cabin, is damaged, it's typically repaired by adding an additional layer of aluminum sheet metal, Goglia said. Because the pressure within the cabin exerts huge stresses while a plane is at cruising altitude, the new metal is layered over a large area of the existing structure and riveted in place so it will hold, he said. Damage to the bulkhead can occur because of an impact with the ground or as a result of cracking that occurs over time, he said. "I've been around airplanes in the several hundreds that I've personally touched that have had bulkhead repairs done," Goglia said. "It's a non-event if it's done right." Violent Explosions While it may take years for a repair to eventually crack enough to fail, that can lead to a violent explosion damaging an aircraft, according to accident reports. Such a failure occurred in 2002 when China Airlines Flight 611 flying from Taiwan to Hong Kong broke apart at the spot where the Boeing Co. 747's tail was repaired 22 years earlier. Japan Airlines Flight 123 hit a mountain in 1985 after a similar repair came apart, claiming 520 lives. When the repair let loose, it blew off the vertical fin rising out of the tail. Without that fin, the plane couldn't be controlled. http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-11-02/downed-russian-jet-suffered-prior-damage-linked-to-other-crashes