Egypt: Russian plane disappeared at 31,000 feet

The Egyptian Civil Aviation agency has said that a Russian commercial jet carrying 224 people, which crashed in the Sinai Peninsula early Saturday, was last seen at 31,000 feet before disappearing off radar 23 minutes after taking off from Sharm el Sheikh airport headed for St Petersburg.

The Airbus A-321 operated by Russian airline Kogalymavia (also known as Siberia-based Metrojet) was carrying 217 passengers – 17 of whom were children – and 7 crew members. Egyptian authorities said all on board were Russians.

Egyptian media said that the country’s fighter jets flying reconnaissance located a debris site in Al-Hassana in central Sinai.

There were unconfirmed reports in some local media that the plane had been split in two.

Egyptian Prime Minister Sherif Ismail, who earlier formed a task force in cooperation with Russian authorities to investigate the cause of the crash, canceled a plan trip to the city of Ismailiyah and met with his cabinet in emergency session early Saturday.

Egyptian media reported that he was headed to the crash site at Al-Hassana, 300km north of the popular Sharm el Sheikh resort frequented by Russian tourists.

Ismail said that 54 ambulance and relief vehicles had arrived at the crash site. Some Egyptian media reported that bodies were now being recovered.

Read moreEgypt: Russian plane disappeared at 31,000 feet | The BRICS Post

Was Air France Captain With a Woman When Flight 447 Was in Trouble?

In the final chaotic moments before Air France flight 447 crashed into the Atlantic Ocean in 2009, it took the captain of the aircraft, who was on a scheduled break, more than a minute to return to the cockpit, despite his two co-pilots’ frantic calls for help, black box recordings showed.

Although it was never revealed what delayed Capt. Marc Dubois, two independent sources told ABC News that the 58-year-old veteran Air France pilot was traveling socially with an off-duty Air France flight attendant named Veronique Gaignard.

Jean-Paul Troadec, the director of BEA, the French authority conducting the investigation into the Flight 447 crash, told ABC News that Gaignard was not part of their investigation because the agency was “not interested” in the “private life of the pilot.” Troadec added that he did not think Dubois’s alleged relations with Gaignard aboard the plane would have played a role in the accident.

According to the tapes, First Officer Cedric Bonin, a 32-year-old pilot who had fewer than 5,000 flight hours under his belt, was at the controls but had never been in this situation before at high altitude. Bonin made the fatal mistake of pulling the plane’s nose up, which caused it to go into a deep stall.
Within seconds, the plane was plummeting about 120 miles an hour in the dark, belly first, with the nose slightly elevated.

“It seems that the pilots did not understand the situation and they were not aware that they had stalled,” Troadec said.




Read more: Was Air France Captain With a Woman When Flight 447 Was in Trouble? - ABC News