{Egypt has deployed a robot submarine to search for the flight data recorders of the missing EgyptAir plane.}<\/p>\n
“We are moving hard to retrieve the two boxes,” President Abdul Fattah al-Sisi said in his first public comments on the crash.<\/p>\n
The Airbus A320 was en route from Paris to Cairo with 66 people aboard when it vanished from radar early on Thursday.<\/p>\n
Mr Sisi said there was “no particular theory we can affirm right now” for what caused flight MS804 to crash.<\/p>\n
Investigators say smoke was detected in various parts of the cabin three minutes before it disappeared.<\/p>\n
Egypt’s civil aviation minister has said the possibility of a terror attack was stronger than technical failure, but Mr Sisi said establishing the cause could take a long time, adding “all scenarios are possible”.<\/p>\n
The Egyptian military released images on Saturday of life vests, personal items and debris showing the EgyptAir logo which were found during the search in the Mediterranean Sea.<\/p>\n
The unnamed robot submarine is normally used to service offshore oil rigs, according to a source from the country’s oil ministry quoted by Reuters news agency.<\/p>\n
The search has also reportedly found body parts and luggage.<\/p>\n
The main body of the plane and the two “black boxes” which record flight data and cockpit transmissions have not yet been located.<\/p>\n
The Aviation Herald said that smoke detectors had gone off in the toilet and the aircraft’s electronics before the signal was lost.<\/p>\n
It said it had received flight data filed through the Aircraft Communications Addressing and Reporting System (ACARS) from three independent channels.<\/p>\n
It said the system showed that at 02:26 local time on Thursday (00:26 GMT) smoke was detected in the jet’s toilet.<\/p>\n
{{map}}<\/p>\n
A minute later – at 00:27 GMT – there was an avionics alert indicating smoke in the bay below the cockpit that contains aircraft electronics and computers.<\/p>\n
The last ACARS message was at 00:29 GMT, the air industry website said, and the contact with the plane was lost four minutes later at 02:33 local time.<\/p>\n
ACARS is used to routinely download flight data to the airline operating the aircraft.
\nAgency spokesman Sebastien Barthe said the messages “generally mean the start of a fire” but added: “We are drawing no conclusions from this. Everything else is pure conjecture.”<\/p>\n
Philip Baum, the editor of Aviation Security International Magazine, told the BBC that technical failure could not be ruled out.<\/p>\n
“There was smoke reported in the aircraft lavatory, then smoke in the avionics bay, and over a period of three minutes the aircraft’s systems shut down, so you know, that’s starting to indicate that it probably wasn’t a hijack, it probably wasn’t a struggle in the cockpit, it’s more likely a fire on board.”<\/p>\n
Greece says radar shows the Airbus A320 making two sharp turns and dropping more than 25,000ft (7,620m) before plunging into the sea.<\/p>\n
The search is now focused on finding the plane’s flight recorders, in waters between 2,500m-3,000m deep.<\/p>\n
In October, an Airbus A321 operated by Russia’s Metrojet blew up over Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula, killing all 224 people on board.<\/p>\n
Sinai Province, a local affiliate of the Islamic State jihadist group, said it had smuggled a bomb on board.<\/p>\n
If anyone is concerned about relatives or friends following the disappearance of the flight, they can call this free number provided by EgyptAir: +202 259 89320<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
{Egypt has deployed a robot submarine to search for the flight data recorders of the missing EgyptAir plane.} “We are moving hard to retrieve the two boxes,” President Abdul Fattah al-Sisi said in his first public comments on the crash. The Airbus A320 was en route from Paris to Cairo with 66 people aboard when […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[100],"byline":[249],"hashtag":[],"class_list":["post-25508","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","tag-africa","byline-bbc"],"bylines":[{"id":249,"name":"BBC","slug":"bbc","description":"","image":{"id":0,"url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/?s=96&d=mm&f=y&r=g","alt":"Default avatar","title":"Default avatar","caption":"","mime_type":"image\/jpeg","sizes":[]},"user_id":104}],"contributors":[{"id":249,"name":"BBC","slug":"bbc","description":"","image":{"id":0,"url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/?s=96&d=mm&f=y&r=g","alt":"Default avatar","title":"Default avatar","caption":"","mime_type":"image\/jpeg","sizes":[]},"user_id":104}],"featured_image":null,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25508","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=25508"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25508\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=25508"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=25508"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=25508"},{"taxonomy":"byline","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/byline?post=25508"},{"taxonomy":"hashtag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/hashtag?post=25508"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}