EgytpAir update - Curt Lewis

UK Air Safety Specialists Arrive in Cairo to Examine Security Measures  UK air security specialists arrived to Cairo International Airport in Egypt on Monday to supervise the security measures applied by EgyptAir to flights departing from Cairo to London, in the follow up to the crash of one of the company's planes, local media reported. A pilot looks out of the cockpit during a search operation by Egyptian air and navy forces for the EgyptAir plane that disappeared in the Mediterranean Sea, in this still image taken from video May 20, 2016. CAIRO (Sputnik) - The delegation consisting of two representatives are inspecting the measures taken by the local authorities and staff to ensure passenger safety in arrival and departure halls, as well as boarding inspections. In addition, the experts will examine the operations of the cargo terminal and procedures for transporting cargo on board aircraft departing for the British capital. A EgyptAir Airbus A320 plane, carrying 66 people, disappeared from radar screens over the Mediterranean Sea, 10 miles into Egyptian airspace on May 19. The plane was headed from Paris to Cairo. EgyptAir has said that the Egyptian Armed Forces have discovered the wreckage and personal items from flight MS804 some 180 miles off the coast of Alexandria. No sign of EgyptAir plane technical problems before takeoff: sources Part of a plane chair among recovered debris of the EgyptAir jet that crashed in the Mediterranean Sea is seen in this handout image released May 21, 2016 by Egypt's military. Egyptian Military/Handout via Reuters The EgyptAir jet that disappeared last week did not show technical problems before taking off from Paris, sources within the Egyptian investigation committee said late on Tuesday. The sources said the plane did not make contact with Egyptian air traffic control, but Egyptian air traffic controllers were able to see it on radar on a border area between Egyptian and Greek airspace known as KUMBI, 260 nautical miles from Cairo. Speaking on condition of anonymity, the sources said the plane disappeared without swerving off radar screens after less than a minute of it entering Egyptian airspace. Air traffic controllers from Greece and Egypt have given differing accounts of the plane's final moments. Egypt's state-owned newspaper Al-Ahram reported on Tuesday that the plane had shown no technical problems before taking off, citing an Aircraft Technical Log signed by its pilot before takeoff. Al-Ahram published a scan of the technical log on its website. The paper said EgyptAir flight 804 transmitted 11 "electronic messages" starting at 5.09 p.m. ET on May 18, about 3 1/2 hours before disappearing from radar screens with 66 passengers and crew on board. The first two messages indicated the engines were functional. The third message came at 8.26 p.m. ET on May 18 and showed a rise in the temperature of the co-pilot's window. The plane kept transmitting messages for the next three minutes before vanishing, Al-Ahram said. Earlier on Tuesday, the head of Egypt's forensics authority dismissed as premature a suggestion that the small size of the body parts retrieved since the Airbus 320 jet crashed indicated there had been an explosion on board. Investigators are looking for clues in the human remains and debris recovered from the Mediterranean Sea. The plane and its black box recorders, which could explain what brought down the Paris-to-Cairo flight as it entered Egyptian air space, have not been located. An Egyptian forensics official said 23 bags of body parts had been collected, the largest no bigger than the palm of a hand. Speaking on condition of anonymity, the official said their size pointed to an explosion, although no trace of explosives had been detected. But Hisham Abdelhamid, head of Egypt's forensics authority, said this assessment was "mere assumptions" and that it was too early to draw conclusions. At least two other sources with direct knowledge of the investigation also said it would be premature to say what caused the plane to plunge into the sea. "All we know is it disappeared suddenly without making a distress call," one of them said, adding that only by analyzing the black boxes or a large amount of debris could authorities begin to form a clearer picture. SCRAPS OF DATA Investigators do have a few scraps of data in the form of fault messages sent by the jet in the last minutes of flight, logging smoke alarms in the forward lavatory and an electronics bay just underneath, but they are tantalizingly incomplete. "The difficulty is to connect these bits of information," said John Cox, executive of Washington-based Safety Operating Systems who co-authored a report on smoke and fire risks by Britain's Royal Aeronautical Society. There are too few messages to fit a typical fire, which would normally trigger a cascade of error reports as multiple systems failed, he said, and too many of them to tie in neatly with a single significant explosion. Investigators also need to understand why, for example, there was no message indicating the autopilot had cut off, progressively handing control back to the pilots as systems failed and computers became unsure what to do. The Frenchman who headed a three-year probe into the 2009 loss of an Air France jet in the Atlantic said the data published so far appeared insufficient for any conclusion. Egypt has deployed a robot submarine and France has sent a search ship to help hunt for the black boxes, but it is not clear whether either of them can detect signals emitted by the flight recorders, lying in waters possibly 3,000 meters (10,000 feet) deep. The signal emitters have a battery life of 30 days. Although government officials have acknowledged the need for international assistance, the U.S. Navy said Egypt had not formally requested American support beyond a P-3 Orion surveillance aircraft, which was deployed on Thursday. LAST MOMENTS Eighteen loads of debris have been recovered, the Egyptian investigation committee said, in a search operation assisted by French and Greek aircraft. Five days after the plane vanished from radar screens, air traffic controllers from Greece and Egypt were still giving differing accounts of its last moments. In Greece, two officials stood by earlier statements that Greek radar had picked up sharp swings in the jet's trajectory - 90 degrees left, then 360 degrees right - as it plunged from a cruising altitude to 15,000 feet before vanishing. Ehab Mohieldin Azmi, head of Egypt's air navigation services, said Egyptian officials had seen no sign of the plane making sharp turns, and that it had been visible at 37,000 feet until it disappeared. "Of course, we tried to call it more than once and it did not respond," he told Reuters. Relatives of the victims were giving DNA samples at a hotel near Cairo airport on Tuesday to help identify the body parts, their grief mixed with frustration. Amjad Haqi, an Iraqi man whose mother Najla was flying back from medical treatment in France, said the families were being kept in the dark and had not been formally told that any body parts had been recovered. "All they are concerned about is to find the black box and the debris of the plane. That's their problem, not mine," he said. "And then they come and talk to us about insurance and compensation. I don't care about compensation, all I care about is to find my mother and bury her." http://www.reuters.com/article/us-egyptair-airplane-forensics-idUSKCN0YF12H Back to Top

The Massive, High-Tech Hunt For EgyptAir Flight MS804 Wreckage An international effort aims to find the doomed jet's black boxes. Passengers' belongings and wreckage from EgyptAir Flight MS804 north of Alexandria, Egypt, on May 21, 2016. An international effort is underway to locate the black boxes and wreckage of doomed EgyptAir Flight MS804, which plunged into the Mediterranean Sea on Thursday carrying 66 people. Planes, ships and submarines are now scouring the waters for a signal and debris from the crash. As in the search for the missing Malaysian Airlines Flight MH370, which continues more than two years on, finding underwater wreckage is extremely difficult. Searchers have only a brief time frame and a small radius in which they can receive signals from an airliner's black boxes before batteries run out on the emitting devices. While ships searching the area where EgyptAir is believed to have crashed have found some wreckage and human remains in the past few days, the black boxes, which could offer insight on the cause of the crash, were missing. Here's what to know about the search: Map locating the flight path of EgyptAir Flight MS804 which disappeared over the Mediterranean Sea enroute from Paris to Cairo. Where Are Searchers Looking? The last known location of the plane was in the Mediterranean Sea, near the Greek island of Karpathos. Search vehicles have headed to the area south of the island, which is about 180 miles north of Alexandria on the Egyptian coast, The Guardian reports. A 900 square-mile search area was set on Saturday. The depth of the water where the search is taking place is an additional complication. The area includes one of the deepest areas in the Mediterranean, with depths as great as 1.9 miles. The French Navy's EV Jacoubet is seen leaving the Mediterranean port of Toulon, France, May 20, 2016. What's Being Used To Find The Plane? Egypt is taking the lead in the search effort for Flight MS804, but is coordinating with teams from France, Britain, the United States and Greece. The nations have contributed vessels and armed forces. The U.S. Navy's 6th Feet has combed the search area with P-3 Orion aircraft, normally used for maritime surveillance. As of Sunday, the aircraft found more than 100 pieces of debris from the EgyptAir crash. The British Navy and Royal Air Force forces also have been sent to the search area, providing a supply ship and C-130 Hercules aircraft. France's Navy deployed the 262-foot Jacoubet patrol ship. The ship, with a crew of 90, is equipped with sonar location devices and a remote-controlled submarine that can dive up to 3,280 feet. Greece has a submarine searching for signals from the flight recorders, as well as C-130 aircraft, The Financial Times reports. Egypt is using a robot submarine that can reach depths of 1.9 miles. The probe is usually used to monitor offshore oil rigs. How Long Will It Take To Find? It's unclear. The international search teams face a number of hurdles. Batteries that power signals from the airliner's black boxes will likely be exhausted in less than 30 days. If the boxes aren't located before that happens, searchers must switch to using sonar devices in a process that will take even longer. Even while signals from the black boxes are operational, the pings may not have enough range to reach the surface if they are 1.9 miles deep. In that case, underwater options, such as submarines or submerged listening devices, may be necessary to find the signal, according to Reuters. On Monday, Egypt's Civil Aviation Minister Sherif Fathy told NBC News that searchers were "far away" from finding the plane's fuselage. Authorities are anxious to determine what caused the crash. Officials have oscillated between suggesting the possibility of a terror attack, and cautioning against jumping to any conclusions based on the limited data and evidence collected. Egypt's Fathy said on Monday that finding the black boxes would be key to understanding the circumstances that brought down the aircraft. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/egyptair-search-wreckage_us_574345dfe4b0613b512af1bc Back to Top

EgyptAir to contract French, Italian companies for black boxes search -Egypt TV CAIRO May 25 (Reuters) - EgyptAir will contract two foreign companies, one French and one Italian, to help search for the black boxes of its plane that crashed in the Mediterranean, Egyptian state television said on Wednesday. http://af.reuters.com/article/egyptNews/idAFC6N16E01X Back to Top

Forensic expert suggests explosion downed EgyptAir jet Body parts recovered from the crash of EgyptAir Flight 804 showed signs of burns and were so small that they suggested the jet was brought down by an explosion, a member of the team examining the remains said Tuesday. But the idea of a blast was promptly dismissed by the head of Egypt's forensic agency as "baseless" speculation. The cause of Thursday's crash of the EgyptAir jet flying from Paris to Cairo that killed all 66 people aboard still has not been determined. Ships and planes from Egypt, Greece, France, the United States and other nations are searching the Mediterranean Sea north of the Egyptian port of Alexandria for the jet's voice and flight data recorders, as well as more bodies and parts of the aircraft. Egypt's civil aviation minister has said he believes terrorism is a more likely explanation than equipment failure or some other catastrophic event. But no hard evidence has emerged on the cause, and no militant group has claimed to have downed the jet. Leaked flight data indicated a sensor detected smoke in a lavatory and a fault in two of the plane's cockpit windows in the final moments of the flight. An Egyptian forensic team was examining the remains of the victims for any traces of explosives, according to a team member and a second official, both speaking on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to talk to reporters. The team member said the fact that all 80 body parts recovered so far were very small and that some showed signs of burns suggested an explosion. "There isn't even a whole body part, like an arm or a head," said the forensic official, who examined the remains. He said at least one part of an arm has signs of burns - an indication it might have "belonged to a passenger sitting next to the explosion." "The logical explanation is that an explosion brought it down," he said, adding that if there was a blast, the cause was not known. But Hisham Abdel-Hamid, head of the Egyptian government's forensic agency, dismissed the suggesting, telling the state-run MENA news agency: "Whatever has been published is baseless and mere assumptions." France's aviation accident investigation agency would not comment on anything involving the bodies or say whether any information has surfaced to indicate an explosion. Other experts were divided on whether the state of the remains necessarily suggested an explosion.