Egypt Airliner CRASHED in Egypt

KINGTV News-Seattle | 1/2/2004 | ME

[Gorons]

Local news just flashed that an Egypt Airliner has crashed in Egypt...

Reporting majority of ~135 passengers are French tourists....

[Djarum]

I was being a smartass.

[GeronL]

Oh...

News Update

TerrorUnderground.com now says they and not TerroristsUnitedOnline.org are responsible for the crash of the Air Flash jet, saying they are also responsible for the Enron scandal they said "almost brought down the entire US government and economy". They said it is a great victory.

[csvset]

I cannot find that old story of the skyjacked jetliner that Fruitcake of Islamic terrorists attempted to force the pilots to crash into the Eiffel Tower.

In December 1994, an Air France flight was hijacked in Algeria and flown to Marseilles, France. The French speculate that the highjackers wanted to crash the plane into a Parisian landmark susch as the Eiffel Tower. French commandos stormed the plane and killed the terrorists.

You can read about it here GIGN at Marseilles Airport

[Gorons]

Egypt Plane Crash Kills 148; Technical Fault Blamed


By Ruben Sprich
Reuters
Saturday, January 3, 2004; 7:15 AM


SHARM EL-SHEIKH, Egypt (Reuters) - An Egyptian Boeing 737 airliner carrying 135 mostly French tourists crashed into the Red Sea off the Egyptian resort of Sharm el-Sheikh on Saturday and a rescue team member said there were no survivors.

"The initial indications are that it was a technical fault, but that is only preliminary," Civil Aviation Ministry Secretary-General Hassan Abo Ghanima told Reuters. He had said earlier: "There is no sign of terrorism."

The plane, operated by the Egyptian company Flash Airlines, disappeared from radar screens minutes after take-off from Sharm el-Sheikh airport at 0244 GMT and crashed into deep water a few miles to the southeast, official sources said.

The pilots did not report any problem and the weather was normal with good visibility, official sources said. The plane was heading for Cairo to refuel, change crew and take on more passengers before flying on to Paris.

A French diplomat based in Egypt said there were 135 passengers aboard, all but one French, and 13 Egyptian and Moroccan crew members.

The crash coincided with intense U.S. concern about possible attacks involving civilian airliners, which has led to the cancellation of seven U.S.-bound flights in just over a week.

Egyptian military aircraft and ships, helped by small boats from nearby diving centers, launched a rescue operation at first light. Eyewitnesses said they were finding pieces of human bodies but no complete corpses and no survivors.

"We have half of a body here, half a body there. But we don't have any body in one piece," said a rescue worker, speaking by telephone from one of the boats.

"There's lots of personal stuff, small bags and toys. We have collected very small pieces of the plane but the body of the plane has sunk," said another rescue worker, who asked not to be named.

Yasser Imam, a spokesman for the local authorities, said: "What they have picked up so far is just fragments of bodies. The chances of finding complete bodies look slim because of the force with which the plane hit the surface of the water."

DEEP WATER

The plane crashed in the Strait of Tiran, between the Sinai peninsula and Saudi Arabia, where the water is hundreds of meters (feet) deep -- too deep for divers to reach the flight recording devices, diving school managers said.

French President Jacques Chirac telephoned his Egyptian counterpart Hosni Mubarak to obtain details of the crash and expressed his "deepest shock" at the tragedy, his office said.

Eyewitnesses in Sharm el-Sheikh said the rescue operation was concentrating on an area about half a mile off Naama Bay, the site of many large hotels.

An Egyptian armed forces C-130 transport plane and two helicopters were taking part in the search, witnesses said.

Flash Airlines is an Egyptian charter airline company based in Cairo and flying to European cities. It flew two Boeing 737-300 planes manufactured in 1993, according to its Web site.

The plane was maintained regularly in Norway and there was no sign of any mechanical fault before its last flight, the official Egyptian news agency MENA reported.

French Transport Minister Gilles de Robien went to Charles de Gaulle airport, where distraught friends and relatives of passengers on the flight were being told of the crash.

An eyewitness speaking on Egyptian television said people heard a loud noise at the time of the crash but he interpreted this as the sound of the plane hitting the water. "In the morning we were surprised by a kind of slapping noise in the sea, a very loud noise," said the unidentified witness.

Sharm el-Sheikh, a major diving resort, is considered one of the most secure places in Egypt because of its isolation and Mubarak's frequent presence. Police man checkpoints on the only paved roads into the resort and check travelers' identities.

The last major crash by an Egyptian plane took place in May 2002, when a Boeing 767 of the state airline EgyptAir crashed near Tunis airport, killing 15 people.

In October 1999, an EgyptAir Boeing 767 dived into the sea off Nantucket, Massachusetts, killing all 217 people on board.

On Christmas Day, a Beirut-bound Boeing 727 smashed into the Atlantic after take-off from Benin, killing 138 people.


© 2004 Reuters

[nicmarlo]

FYI ping:

An Egyptian Boeing 737 airliner carrying 135 mostly French tourists crashed into the Red Sea off the Egyptian resort of Sharm el-Sheikh on Saturday and a rescue team member said there were no survivors.

[autoresponder]

    

[herkbird]

I don't believe that ditching an aircraft in water is all that successful, most end in failure. Most Flight Training Centers, procedures for training how to ditch an aircraft in the water are much like landing a plane with the landing gear up. Flight Simulators lack the actual software data to do an accurate portrayal of how to perform a realistic water ditching procedure. Who in their right mind is going to try to successfully ditch a real aircraft in the water to collect this data? NO ONE..... The fact that few aircraft are ditched in the water with success lends truth to the fact that most flight crews are poorly trained to perform the procedure in the first place.

herkbird

[peter the great]

The trouble with this story is that it does raise a lot of eyebrows. Last week there was a plane crash in Africa also a Charter carrying Lebanese Christians back to Lebanon to celebrate Christmas. In that part of the world what are the odds that you would have two Chartered planes crash within a week carrying predominately non-muslims. Also your post about the US Air crash a couple years ago it was interesting reading however, I was expecting proof positive that someone charged the cockpit.

[getmeouttaPalmBeachCounty_FL]

Interesting find.

BA flt. 222

Osama is 666.

Lord, God, Almighty, we thank You for all the blessings You have given to us on this earth. We worship You, and look to You, Lord, for direction and strength during this time of uncertainty and conflict. Help us, Father, to discern all which tries to harm Your flock, and place Your might behind our efforts to crush the head of the serpant.

In Jesus' name.

[MeekOneGOP]

Story location: http://wireservice.wired.com/wired/story.asp?section=Breaking&storyId=810910&tw=wn_wire_story

French Families Weep as Egypt Holiday Turns Tragic 

Saturday, January 03, 2004 7:53 a.m. ET

By Kirsten Gehmlich

PARIS (Reuters) - Relatives of some of the 133 French tourists killed in a plane crash off the Egyptian coast gathered at Paris's main airport Saturday, grieving for loved ones who had been heading home after a New Year beach holiday in the sun.

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President Jacques Chirac expressed his shock after an Egyptian airliner carrying 135 tourists and 13 crew crashed into the Red Sea shortly after take-off from the popular resort of Sharm el-Sheikh early Saturday.

A rescue team member said there were no survivors of the crash, which Egyptian authorities said was apparently caused by a technical fault.

France's Foreign Ministry said in a statement that 148 people were on board, 133 of them French tourists, and said it would take part in an enquiry into the causes of the disaster.

"It is with shock that I learned of the terrible tragedy in Egypt," Chirac said in a statement issued by his office. Relatives arriving at Paris's Charles de Gaulle airport to welcome the vacationers home wept on hearing of the disaster, and were taken to a crisis center at a nearby hotel for counseling. Prime Minister Jean-Pierre Raffarin and Transport Minister Gilles de Robien rushed to the airport, where the plane had been due to land at 9 a.m., to meet the victims' friends and relatives.

Raffarin expressed his "deep pain" over the crash. On arriving at the airport, he went straight to meet the victims' families and offer them his condolences.

The Flash Airlines charter plane was bringing home the tourists, mostly from the Paris area, after a winter sun holiday, said an employee of tour operator FRAM, which organized the trip for most of those on board.

Chirac's office said the president had called his Egyptian counterpart Hosni Mubarak to obtain "full details of the circumstances of this crisis," and had asked Foreign Affairs secretary of state Renaud Muselier to go to Egypt as soon as possible.

The Foreign Ministry said France was doing all it could to throw light on the situation and would help Egyptian authorities find and identify the bodies. It would also take part in an inquiry into the causes of the crash, it said in a statement.

Egypt's Civil Aviation Ministry Secretary-General Hassan Abo Ghanima told Reuters the crash appeared to have been caused by a technical fault and said there was no sign of terrorism.

The Foreign Ministry has set up the following crisis number for families of the victims: +33 1 48 64 59 59.

Copyright © 2003 Reuters Limited.

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[tgslTakoma]

Curiouser and curiouser it gets. I hope the Egyptian and French spokesmen aren't offended by my skepticism at their report that this is a simply a tragic accident of mechanical malfunction. Mechanical problems can also be intentionally caused by human intervention.

[tgslTakoma]

Sharm el-Sheik is a popular Red Sea tourist resort that also frequently hosts major political and economic summits, and British Prime Minister Tony Blair is now vacationing there.

Hmmmmm...

[jriemer]

According to Boeing's website, the maximum capacity for a 737-300 in all economy seating is 149. Link

[nuffsenuff]

If this turns out to be a terrorists attack, I called it...

http://freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1049409/posts?page=68#68

I hope it wasn't a terrorist attack, though.

[nuffsenuff]

oops... wrong post...

http://freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1049409/posts?page=80#80

[nuffsenuff]

I've never seen that video clip...

That is just typical Clinton. You can just see him thinking, "ha ha.. oh, crap, Camera... Sniffle."