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MARSEILLE, France (AFP) - A US law firm said it was representing the families of 10 victims of a plane crash last month in Egypt in a suit against the maker of the plane, Boeing. "We have been given the authority to begin preparing for a lawsuit that would be filed in the United States" by 10 of the victims' families, lawyer Manuel von Ribbeck said at a press conference in the southern French city of Marseille. The suit will be filed against the US aviation giant Boeing and the US company International Lease and Finance Corporation, which owned and...

CAIRO, Jan. 18 (UPI) -- A French search team has retrieved the second of two black boxes carried by the plane that crashed into Egypt's Red Sea, killing 134 French tourists. The al-Jazeera Arabic-language network said said the instrument was found extremely deep in the Red Sea, at a depth of more than a 1.000 meters (3,280 feet). The recovery of the voice recorder Saturday follows that of the flight recorder. The head of the Egyptian commission investigating the crash of the chartered plane, Shaker Qilada, earlier told United Press International that Egypt would do the analysis of the data....

One of the two black box flight recorders from a plane that crashed early this month off the Egyptian coast, killing all 148 people on board, has been recovered, a French source told AFP. It added that the box would be officially handed over to Egyptian authorities at 0900 GMT. The Flash Airlines Boeing 737 crashed shortly after take-off for Paris from this Red Sea resort, killing 134 French tourists and a Moroccan as well as 13 Egyptian crew members. The black boxes are expected to reveal the exact cause of the tragedy, which Egyptian and French experts believe...

Egyptian jet's black box found on seabed French search teams have located one of the black boxes from a crashed Egyptian plane and are working on lifting it from the Red Sea floor. Shaker Qilada, chief of the Egyptian investigation committee, said it was not yet known whether the box was the voice or data recorder. "The box will be handed over to the Sharm el-Sheik port authorities on Saturday," Qilada told reporters. He said the box would immediately treated with chemicals to remove any salt build-up so that the data inside would not be damaged. Egyptian and French officials...

Swiss won't publish list of banned airlines The Swiss government says it does not intend to make public a list of airlines prohibited from Swiss airspace, for the time being. On Thursday, Britain released a list of airlines banned from its skies, despite a European aviation agreement prohibiting the publication of such information. The transport ministry reiterated on Friday that it would not publish the names of airlines banned for safety concerns, despite pressure from consumer groups. The statement follows revelations that the passenger jet involved in a deadly crash in Egypt on January 3 was one of 24...

When President Jacques Chirac delivered his televised speech about the hijab (female Muslim scarf) in France, I believed there would be an immediate Jihad against France.I anticipated a wide array of jihadist offensives against Paris. My primary analytical reason was the strategic importance of the scarf to Islamic fundamentalists worldwide. According to religious radicals, the long scarf — which is supposed to cover the hair, and in some cases, the faces of Muslim women — is not just a tradition, but a religious duty called fard dinee. Per fundamentalist clerics, women have to cover. And by way of extension, those...

Black box from airliner that crashed killing 148 cannot be recovered By Jocelyn Gecker in Sharm el-Sheikh 07 January 2004 One of the black-box flight data recorders from the Flash Airlines jet that crashed in the Red Sea in Egypt on Saturday has been located. But the water is too deep for it to be retrieved, French officials said yesterday. Rear Admiral Jacques Mazars said that more advanced equipment was needed to retrieve the box, which was believed to be about 800m below the sea's surface. The plane - an 11-year-old Boeing 737 - crashed into the sea shortly after...

SHARM EL-SHEIK, Egypt Jan. 6 — Searchers have located one of the "black box" flight data recorders from a crashed charter jet but it was too deep to be immediately retrieved, a French official said Tuesday. Rear Adm. Jacques Mazars told reporters at the popular resort that more advanced equipment was needed to retrieve the box, which was believed to be 1,970 to 2,620 feet below the sea's surface. "What is important for us is to retrieve one of the boxes," he said. A robot submarine sent by the French can operate no deeper than 1,320 feet. The seabed in...

Jan. 6 — CAIRO (Reuters) - French divers have located a flight recorder and the exact position of the plane which crashed into the Red Sea killing all 148 people on board, Egypt's official Middle East News Agency said Tuesday, quoting French sources. The divers located the wreckage by detecting the signal which the flight recorders emit, it said. French officials were not immediately available to confirm the report. The Paris-bound flight, carrying 133 French tourists and 15 other people, crashed Saturday into deep waters off the Egyptian resort of Sharm el-Sheikh. A French official said Tuesday that salvage workers...

French Find Possible Egypt Crash Black Box Signal By Opheera McDoom SHARM EL-SHEIKH, Egypt (Reuters) - French divers may have detected a signal from the flight recorder of an Egyptian plane which crashed into the Red Sea, but French sources could not confirm an Egyptian report that the device had been found. Reuters Photo (Reuters Video)   The "black boxes," which record technical data about the flight and conversations between pilots, should help explain what caused the crash, which killed all 148 people on board, including 133 French tourists. Once they are sure of the location, French salvage experts plan...

swissinfo January 5, 2004 8:36 PM Swiss inspectors found similar faults on both Flash Airlines planes (Keystone) Switzerland’s aviation authorities say they found serious faults on both planes owned by the Egyptian carrier, Flash Airlines, over a year before one of its planes crashed. But the Federal office for civil aviation (FOCA) said it was drawing no conclusions about Saturday’s crash, which killed all 148 people on board. The office said in a statement it had found a number of problems on both aircraft, including missing navigational documents, fuel calculations that didn’t match international standards, and unsuitable emergency exit signs....

PARIS, (AFP) - Flash Airlines, the Egyptian charter operator whose flight to Paris crashed in the Red Sea on Saturday, recently underwent successful tests in France and has a "good reputation," Transport Minister Gilles de Robien said on French radio Monday. Asked about Switzerland's decision to ban the company from its airspace in 2002 after it failed a spot check on one of its two planes, de Robien told France Inter that France had since carried out three inspections on Flash Airlines. The first had revealed a minor problem concerning the signalling of an exit door, but the two subsequent...

Searchers 'may have detected flight recorder' Searchers hunting for the wreckage of a charter jet that crashed into the Red Sea have detected a signal that could be the plane's black box flight data recorder. The signal was detected by a radar on a robotic arm used by searchers in the area where Flash Airlines' Flight FSH604 crashed on Saturday. "It's a positive sign but nothing conclusive," said a French Embassy official, on condition of anonymity. There was no indication of how deep the signal was coming from. Experts had said the deep waters would slow recovery efforts. Most of...

SHARM EL-SHEIKH, Egypt (Reuters) - France said on Monday it attached little credence to a previously unknown Islamic group's claim to have brought down a plane that crashed off Egypt, killing 133 French tourists and 15 other people. Egypt again defended the safety record of Flash Airlines, operators of the Boeing 737 that plunged into the Red Sea on Saturday, but Switzerland issued a fresh statement that it had banned the Egyptian company from its airspace on safety grounds. French civil aviation authority head Michel Wachenheim said France's own checks on the doomed plane had showed "nothing abnormal." An anonymous...

An anonymous caller claiming to represent a previously unknown Islamic group says they brought down the Egyptian plane which crashed into the Red Sea on Saturday, killing 148 people. The man told an international news agency in Cairo that the Yemen-based group Ansar al-Haq (Followers of the Truth) would also attack Air France planes unless the French government drops plans to ban Islamic headscarves from state schools. There was no way to check the claim of the caller, who said he was an Egyptian member of the group. The Egyptian government has ruled out a deliberate attack on the Boeing...

The Egyptian charter airline whose Boeing 737 crashed on Saturday killing all 148 people on board, including 133 French tourists, has been banned from flying to one European country for more than a year because of safety concerns, it emerged on Sunday. Swiss aviation authorities said Flash Airlines, whose flight FSH604 from the Egyptian resort of Sharm el-Sheikh to Paris plunged into the Red Sea within minutes of takeoff, had been barred from Swiss airspace since October 2002 after a spot check on one of its jets uncovered safety problems. "During a routine inspection at Zurich we discovered the airline...

CAIRO, Jan. 5 (Xinhuanet) -- A French submarine robot will dive into the Red Sea on Monday to search for the "black box" flight recorders of a Boeing 737 that crashed on Saturday, leaving all 148 people on board dead. The robot will reach 1,000 meters under water, a depth inaccessible by human divers, reports here said on Monday. The "black box" data and voice recorders are expected to help explain what happened to the plane that plunged, shortly after take-off, into the deep waters near the Egyptian Red Sea resort Sharm el-Sheikh. Besides the robot, French divers and salvage...

Tourists in Eygpt Continue Diving, Despite Bodies Tourists in the Egyptian resort of Sharm el-Sheikh have continued their diving holidays despite the plane crash into the Red Sea (sn reported). Manager of one of the diving centres in Sharm el-Sheikh, Jusienka Leligdowicz, said: "We are fully booked today." Leligdowicz has found body parts near the crash site. She said: "I'm glad they shut Na'ama Bay. I don't want my clients to see that." "This could happen anywhere. We're not put off. You have to carry on with life," said one British tourist, although he did add that he hoped not...

Huge power failure is blamed for air crash By Toby Harnden in Sharm el Sheikh and Henry Samuel in Paris (Filed: 05/01/2004) A catastrophic power failure probably caused a Boeing 737 to crash into the Red Sea, killing all 148 on board, minutes after taking off from an Egyptian diving resort, the French government said last night. "We can never be absolutely certain but all the indications seem to point to the same theory," Gilles de Robien, the French transport minister, told Europe 1 radio. "There was no explosion before the crash and no one has claimed responsibility for [an]...

Rescuers on Sunday resumed searching for bodies after a charter jet full of French tourists crashed into the Red Sea, killing all 148 people aboard. Switzerland, meanwhile, revealed that it had banned the airline more than a year ago because of safety problems. Flash Airlines flight FSH604, bound for Paris with a stopover in Cairo, crashed early Saturday, minutes after taking off from the airport at the Egyptian resort of Sharm el-Sheik. Officials blamed mechanical failure. Search crews on military and civilian vessels have found only small pieces of wreckage and "very few" body parts from the shark-infested waters near...