From the current edition of The Economist - the journalist's story of cigarette smoke emanating from the cockpit exactly fits my experience the last three times I flew with EgyptAir. I wouldn't fly with them again. I try to avoid stereotypes, but probably more than any country I can think of, every time something goes wrong the Egyptian official narrative defaults to 'it wasn't our fault, must have been someone else'.
https://www.economist.com/gulliver/2018/07/14/what-really-happened-to-egyptair-flight-804
GULLIVER is not the type of person to kick up a fuss on his travels, least of all when lucky enough to be at the front of the plane. But his patience was pushed to the limit a couple of years ago, when his EgyptAir flight from Cairo to London was blighted by the near-constant stench of cigarette smoke wafting in from the cockpit. Shackled by British meekness and an unwillingness to challenge a flight crew, your asthmatic correspondent suffered the coughs and tried instead to focus on work. Conversations with Egyptian friends later revealed that on-board cigarette smoke is hardly a rarity when flying with the North African flag-carrier. Naturally, anecdotes such as this provide only a snapshot of an airline’s safety standards. But it is a deeply disturbing snapshot given the stalled investigation into EgyptAir Flight 804, which crashed into the Mediterranean Sea during a routine flight from Paris to Cairo in 2016, killing all 66 people aboard. This month, France’s air-crash investigation agency, BEA, took the unusual step of criticising the official Egyptian investigation into the disaster. The French body rejects Egypt’s conclusion that a “malicious act” likely brought down the plane. When BEA was shown supposed evidence of explosive traces on the remains of some of the victims two years ago, it suggested that the test results may have been tampered with. It believes that a fire likely brought down the aircraft, basing its conclusion on three pieces of evidence: electronic signals sent from the plane indicating that smoke alarms were activated in the toilet and avionics bays; cockpit voice recordings that show the flight crew discussing an on-board fire; and wreckage that bears signs of high temperatures and soot.
Unearthing the truth about Flight 804 will not bring back the 66 victims. But it may bring some closure to their relatives. And, if lessons can be learned, it probably will help save lives in future. BEA notes that Egypt ignored requests to conduct further tests relating to the fire theory and then failed to publish a final report into the crash. Without this, it says it has no platform on which “to set out its differences of opinion, as authorised by the international provisions”. This response, like Gulliver's, is too timid. The French body should take its concerns directly to the European Aviation Safety Agency (EASA), which has the power to ban EgyptAir from the European Union’s skies if it believes the airline’s regulator is failing to abide by international norms for air crash investigations.