66 people died in the 2016 crash, which Egyptian authorities initially blamed for terrorism.
The crash of EgyptAir flight MS804 from Paris to Cairo in 2016, which the Egyptian authorities initially defined as a terrorist act, was caused by a pilot who smoked a cigarette, an investigation has established.
The plane disappeared in the Mediterranean between Crete and the shores of northern Egypt on May 19, 2016, carrying 66 passengers and crew, all of whom died. It took a month to find the remains.
Egyptian investigators initially said they found traces of explosives in the wreckage of the victims. Cairo’s chief prosecutor ordered an urgent state security investigation, but his findings were never made public.
A confidential 134-page investigative document compiled by French experts and sent to the Court of Appeal in Paris now explains the cause of the pilot’s cigarette smoking crash.
According to a report received from the Italian newspaper Corriere della Sera, the co-pilot’s oxygen mask was left in “emergency” mode instead of “normal” by a maintenance engineer.
The cigarette ignited the oxygen, causing a spark that led to a fire. Shortly before he disappeared, the plane’s detection system warned of smoke in front of the plane, the report said.
The ACARS system, which transmits short messages between aircraft and ground stations, sent seven messages in two seconds, including a malfunction warning to a computer system that is crucial to its flight maneuvering mechanisms.
Neither pilot Mohammed Sayed Ali Shokair nor co-pilot Mohammed Ahmed Mamduh Asem have asked for help, the report said.
Authorities were on high alert at the time of the crash following the terrorist attack at the Bataclan concert hall in Paris and Brussels.
Due to allegations of terrorism, the Egyptian authorities did not disclose their findings and did not submit a report within a year, as required by international law.
The French Bureau of Civil Aviation Safety and Investigation (BEA) is analyzing the plane’s black box, but intergovernmental agreements do not allow the French authorities – who are not formally responsible for the investigation – to disclose any information.
According to the Convention on International Civil Aviation (ICAO), the state responsible for the investigation must provide a public report within 12 months of the incident. If it cannot do so, it must publish a preliminary report for each anniversary of the event.
Egyptian authorities never released their findings until French authorities were able to disclose any information, despite the fact that 15 French citizens died in the crash.
A source close to the French investigation was quoted by the media in May 2017 as saying that no traces of explosives had been found on the remains of French victims on board the plane.
In a rare public statement, BEA said in July 2018 that “the most likely hypothesis is that the fire broke out in the cockpit during cruising time and spread quickly, leading to loss of control of the aircraft.”
However, he said that “it is necessary to have a final report on the incident in order to be able to present to the Egyptian authorities any differences of opinion, as established by international regulations.”
The families of the victims have long wanted to know the answers to their many questions. “Six years later, we are still caught between the desire to know the truth and the feeling of exhaustion because things are not going well,” said Julie Heslowin, who lost both her brother and father in the crash to the Corriere della Sera.
“We want to know why we lost our loved ones and we don’t know that to this day.
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