It is very unlikely that mechanical failure could have been the cause of the Egyptair accident over the Mediterranean Sea, according to aviation experts.
Egyptian officials yesterday afternoon said wreckage from the aircraft, human remains and some passenger belongings were found about 290 kilometres from Alexandria. There was no sign of the bulk of the wreckage or of any location signal from the ‘black box’ flight recorders.
Captain Joe Farrugia, previously chief pilot at Air Malta and with 40 years flying experience, said the aircraft, an Airbus A320, was an advanced plane and very unlikely to have suffered such a catastrophic mechanical failure.
Flight MS804 was en route from Paris to Cairo with 66 passengers and crew when it vanished early on Thursday. Extensive searches were underway to locate debris and find the flight recorders.
If the wreckage is contained in a small area, it will indicate the plane was intact when it hit the sea
Capt. Farrugia, who is safety and security manager at Sky First, an aviation company, said the pilots would have signalled distress had there been a mechanical fault unless this was caused by some explosive device that triggered a rapid chain of events. He could not exclude a situation where somebody gained access to the cockpit and took the controls, even if this was a remote possibility.
Captain Mark Micallef Eynaud, former chief of flight operations at Air Malta, said the publicly available information indicated that, for whatever reason, the airplane went out of control. According to Greek Defence Minister Panos Kammenos the aircraft was at an altitude of 37,000 feet.
“It turned 90 degrees left and then a 360-degree turn toward the right, dropping from 37,000 to 15,000 feet and then it was lost at about 10,000 feet,” Mr Kammenos said. The data seems to suggest a rapid descent outside the norm, and according to Egyptian Aviation Minister Sherif Fathi, the possibility of having “a different action, or having a terror attack, is higher than the possibility of having a technical [fault]”.
Capt. Micallef Eynaud would not rule out completely a mechanical failure but, in the circumstances, it appeared not to be the most likely cause.
Pilots are trained to signal distress the moment a problem crops up, which would indicate that things deteriorated rapidly, not giving them enough time to make radio contact.
“This could indicate the [cockpit] crew members were desperately trying to salvage the aircraft or there was a catastrophic failure that destroyed the communications equipment,” he added.
Capt. Micallef Eynaud said the wreckage would give an indication of what might have happened. “If the wreckage is contained in a small area, it will indicate the plane was intact when it hit the sea. If it is spread out over a large radius, the aircraft would have broken up mid-air,” he added.
Capt. Farrugia said it would become clearer what happened to the aircraft when the flight data recorder was found. “This would have registered all the technical data and provide voice recordings of anything that went on in the cockpit, helping investigators piece together the final moments that led to the accident.”
kurt.sansone@timesofmalta.com