Egypt Airliner CRASHED in Egypt - A final update on root cause analysis? Technical Fault Blamed

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."

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.

Rank	Location	Receipts	Donors/Avg	Freepers/Avg	Monthlies
21	Ohio	100.00	1	100.00	440	0.23	542.25	15

As someone posted on another thread:

Following is a chronology of major airline crashes since 2001.

July 3, 2001 -- A Russian Tupolev-154 plane crashed near the Siberian city of Irkutsk, killing 136 passengers and nine crew members on board.

Oct. 4, 2001 -- A Russian Tupolev-154 jet flying from Israel plunged into the Black Sea, killing all 78 on board, after it was hit by a stray Ukrainian missile during live-fire exercises in the Crimean peninsula.

Oct. 8, 2001 -- At least 114 people were killed when a Scandinavian Airlines System (SAS) airliner and a small plane collided in heavy fog at Milan's Linate airport.

Nov. 12, 2001 -- An American Airlines Airbus A300 bound for Santo Domingo in the Dominican Republic, crashed into New York's Queen's district minutes after take off, killing at least 265 people.

Jan. 28, 2002 -- A Boeing 727 belonging to Ecuadorian carrier TAME with 92 passengers and crew on board crashed into Colombia's Cumbal volcano, killing all on board.

Feb. 12, 2002 -- An Iran Air Tours TU-154 passenger plane flying from Tehran to Khorramabad crashed near the western city, killing all 119 people on board.

April 15, 2002 -- An Air China Boeing 767 passenger aircraft traveling from Beijing to Pusan in South Korea crashed into a mountain. Of the 166 on board 38 survived. It was Air China's first crash in nearly 50 years.

May 4, 2002 -- A Nigerian EAS Airlines' BAC 1-11-500 with 105 people on board crashed in the northern Nigerian city of Kano, killing at least 148 people.

May 7, 2002 -- A China Northern MD-82 jet fell into the sea off Dalian in northeast China, killing all 112 passengers and crew on board.

July 1, 2002 -- A Bashkirian Airlines Tupolev 154 passenger plane carrying Russian children to a holiday in Spain collided with a German cargo Boeing 757 near Lake Constance in southwestern Germany, killing 71 people, including 52 children.

Feb. 19, 2003 -- An Iranian military plane crashed near Kerman in southeastern Iran. Iran said all 276 soldiers and aircrew aboard were killed.

March 6, 2003 -- An Algerian flag carrier Boeing 737-200 crashed shortly after take-off from Tamanrasset airport, killing at least 102 passengers and crew.

May 26, 2003 -- An Ukrainian YK-42 passenger plane heading to Spain crashed near the Trabzon Airport in northeastern Turkey, killing 74, including 62 Spanish soldiers returning from their peacekeeping mission in Afghanistan.

July 8, 2003 -- A Sudanese Boeing 737 crashed shortly after taking off from Port Sudan airport, killing 105 passengers and 11 crew members. The head of the Sudan's defense forces and at least seven foreigners were among the dead.

Dec. 25, 2003 -- A Boeing 727 owned by Union des Transports Africains (UTA) crashed en route Beirut over the coastal capital of Cotonou, Benin, with 151 passengers and 10 crew members on board. By the end of Dec. 31, the death toll has risen to 139.

Jan. 3, 2004 -- An Egyptian charter plane Boeing 737 crashed into the Red Sea early on Saturday shortly after taking off from the resort of Sharm el-Sheikh, killing all the 135 passengers and six crew members aboard.

Copyright 2004 XINHUA NEWS AGENCY

If you read this thread that I started on this topic originally, in fact specifically this subject, you'll understand why I am suspicious:

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1050751/posts?page=206#206

Regarding the Pittsburgh 737-300 crash;

The jet that crashed outside Pittsburgh was a Boeing 737-300, a model nicknamed the "Quichewagon."

It's called that because it has computers that let the plane practically fly itself. Pilots who rely on the high-tech devices are less macho. They are "quiche-eaters."

The stubby two-engine plane has all the sex appeal of a four-door sedan. Other jets have mean-sounding nicknames like Mad Dog, Mega-Dog and Yard Dart, but the 737 names are wimpy: Fat Albert, Guppy, Fat Little Ugly Fellow, or FLUF.

It is dull but efficient, the world's most widely used airliner. As you read this, more than 700 are in the air. The plane accounts for 40 percent of the flights from Tampa International Airport, far more than any other plane.

The question facing Haueter was whether the Fat Little Ugly Fellow had a hidden flaw, a gremlin that had gone undetected since the first 737s began flying 30 years earlier. If there was a flaw, it would be like Russian roulette: Countless 737s could fly without a problem, but some day, another one would go down.

A lot was riding on the investigation: the safety of passengers boarding 737s every day; the fate of the airplane itself; the fortunes of USAir and Boeing; and the reputation of the NTSB.

Most crashes are solved within a few weeks, but this one would defy explanation. It would become one of the greatest mysteries in the history of aviation.

Haueter's detective work would require a combination of amazing science and luck. His team would explore everything from whether a hydraulic gadget failed to whether a terrorist blew up the plane to whether it crashed because a fat passenger stepped through the floor.

Finding the truth would be especially difficult because of the raw politics that intruded on the investigation. Boeing, in particular, would play hardball to keep the government from blaming its airplane.

It took 28 seconds for the plane to flip out of the sky and crash into the hill in Hopewell. It would take more than four years for the NTSB to decide if it could explain why.

* * *

The plane's black boxes – the voice and flight recorders that really are bright orange – were found a few hours after the crash and flown to Washington.

Technicians in the NTSB lab pried open the battered flight data recorder, transferred the data into a computer and zapped it back to the Holiday Inn in Pittsburgh within a few hours. The first person to see it was John Clark, a silver-haired NTSB engineer. He sat on the floor, studying the numbers on his laptop computer.

The newest recorders take more than 100 measurements of a flight, but the box in the USAir plane took only 11 basic measurements, giving only a rough picture of what happened to Flight 427. Still, the box gave Clark an important clue. The numbers for compass heading showed that at 6,000 feet above Hopewell, the nose of the 737 had abruptly moved left, like a car starting to skid sideways on wet pavement.

Many things can make a plane do that, but one was most likely: a sudden move by the rudder.

"There is something going on here with the yaw," Clark told Haueter. "It looks like this airplane had some type of rudder event."

It was an encouraging lead. But NTSB investigators have an old saying: Never believe anything you hear in the first 48 hours. The first few theories about a crash – the causes du jour – typically don't pan out.

Back in Washington, the voice recorder team was meeting in one of the safety board's listening rooms, replaying the final words of pilots Emmett and Germano. The rooms have thick walls and insulated ceilings so screams and dying words won't be overheard by people passing in the hallway.

The tape from the USAir plane made one thing clear: The pilots never understood what was going wrong.

The engineers played the recording over and over. And over and over came Germano's dying words: "What the hell is this?"

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