<just a webtranslation - only minor rewriting/improving>
--/--
EgyptAir flight crashed in the Mediterranean, six years of silence and no final report
The EgyptAir plane then crashed in the Mediterranean
25 Apr 2022
On 19 May 2016 the Airbus A320 departed from Paris and headed for Cairo with 66 people crashes into the sea. Egypt has not published the results of the investigation. Relatives of the victims: "We want the truth"
Immediately after that flight Quentin Heslouin, a 41-year-old French engineer, wants to take his dad Pierre, 75, to the Abu Simbel archaeological site in Egypt. A trip together, just the two of them. Although where they are seated - the first in seats 31C, the second at 31B - you would have seen little or nothing of the night landing in Cairo: the row is level with the wings. But Quentin and Pierre will never have the chance to see either the metropolis or the ruins that are a World Heritage Site. The plane on which they travel, an EgyptAir Airbus A320 departed from Paris-Charles de Gaulle and headed for the Egyptian capital, sank into the Mediterranean on 19 May 2016, 290 kilometers from Alexandria in Egypt. There are 66 people on board: 56 passengers, 7 crew members and 3 security officers.
The alarms
Before disappearing from the radar - and shortly after leaving Greek airspace - Flight MS804 reports through the automatic system the presence of smoke in the front bathroom and in the lower part of the nose. The pilots do not launch any may days. The Airbus A320 is one of the most used and safest aircraft in the world. Thousands fly every day. But six years after that tragedy, the Egyptian authorities - leading the investigations by jurisdiction - have never produced any final investigation report, as desired by international treaties. Nor is it preliminary.
Foto A debris from EgyptAir's Airbus A320 spotted in the Mediterranean
The news to families
“Since May 2016 we have only had questions and no answers. We want to understand why we lost our loved ones and we still don't know it today, ”Julie Heslouin, elementary school teacher, sister of Quentin and daughter of Pierre, tells Corriere della Sera on the phone. Julie animates the committee of relatives of the victims of flight MS804. The moment when life changed for her she remembers it very well. "In the morning I saw on TV that an EgyptAir plane had crashed, but I didn't immediately connect the fact to the trip of my brother and my father", she reconstructs. "At that point my sister Aude called the emergency number for the family and that's where we found out."
The terrorism alarm
Flight MS804 - with Mohammed Saied Ali Shokair and first officer Mohammed Ahmed Mamdouh Assem at the controls - takes off from "Charles de Gaulle" in Paris at 23.09 on 18 May 2016. It is a particular period in Europe with alarm thresholds at the highest. The autumn before, in the French capital, there were the attacks of the Bataclan and its surroundings (130 dead, 368 injured). On 22 March, a couple of months before the flight, a terrorist group organized the attacks in the Brussels area and at the airport (32 victims, 340 injured). So when the Airbus A320 disappears, the first thought is of a terrorist attack.
Foto The two "black boxes" of the aircraft that sank in 2016
Above Italy
At 00.11 on 19 May the jet enters the Italian airspace above Livigno, a few minutes later it leaves the country from Veneto, then runs along the entire Balkans and continues further south. At 01.24 - they reconstruct the routes of the specialized site Flightradar24 - enter the Greek airspace, but an hour later neither the Greek nor the Egyptian controller managed to get in touch. At 2.30am the Airbus disappears from the radars of both area control centers after veering a couple of times, first to the left, then immediately to the right.
Foto The two pilots at the controls of flight MS804
The seven signals
Shortly before sinking, it turns out later, the plane sent 7 "dispatches" in just 2 seconds through the "Acars", a data communication system with ground stations: they report problems with the anti-ice sensors, the windows of the cockpit, the presence of smoke in the front bathroom and in the avionics compartment (under the cockpit), the stop of the functioning of 2 computer systems crucial for flight and of the one that maneuvers the wings. Neither the commander nor the FO mentions it or asks for assistance.
Foto The Bea detective office hangar near Paris
The start of the investigation
Relations with the Egyptians are immediately problematic. The incident, for Cairo, is an act of terrorism and for this reason the investigation requires the documents to be kept secret. The transalpine authorities find it hard to support these theses. The dynamics of the debris recovered around the impact area, according to Western experts, excludes the explosion at high altitude. The truth lies in the 2 black boxes, found and analyzed in the laboratories near Paris of the French detective agency Bea. But the intergovernmental agreement stipulates that Bea cannot disclose the information because she is not responsible for the investigation. A search warrant from the French judiciary is needed to obtain the data of the black boxes which remain known only to a very few people. «From the Egyptians we received only the condolences of the rite and the remains of our loved ones. Then silence, ”Julie says.
foto The one on the 2016 flight is missing from the list of investigations into accidents in Egypt
No document
Cairo stops confronting Paris a few weeks after the accident, they let the transalpines filter out. Since then, it's just silences, omissions and tensions. Egyptian investigators have never published a preliminary report - which international standards usually indicate to do within 30 days of the incident - or a definitive one. "We have not received any final document on flight MS804, but to find out the reasons we invite you to ask the state that set up the investigation commission," a spokesman for ICAO, the UN civil aviation agency, explained to the Courier.
What does Annex 13 of the Icao regulations on air accidents say
International rules
Annex 13 of the ICAO regulation provides that "the state conducting the investigation must make the final report available to the public as soon as possible or, in any case, within 12 months of the accident". If this is not possible then "the state must publish a provisional report on the occasion of each anniversary of the accident". Which Egypt has never done. The civil aviation authorities and local investigative offices have never responded to the Courier's requests. No comment also from EgyptAir, while the French judicial authority - which has opened a file because there are compatriots among the victims - prefers secrecy.
EgyptAir's maintenance hangar (photo by the airline)
The counter-investigation
A 76-page document, prepared between 2018 and 2019 by 2 French experts, claims that in the previous 5 flights that aircraft recorded about 20 warnings for more or less important technical problems - from the air intake system in the engines to the smoke detection sensors on board - "but were not reported by the pilots and therefore not analyzed by the maintenance of EgyptAir," it says. Egyptian civil aviation denies the existence of technical problems. "Before its penultimate flight (from Cairo to Paris, ed.) The plane should not have taken off without extensive control," write the 2 experts. However, they conclude that it is not possible to identify a root cause.
Foto Some of the faces of the 66 victims of the plane crash in Cairo, Egypt
The French version
A spokesperson for Bea, contacted by Corriere, explains that the official position of the French detective remains that of 6 July 2018. With a press release - at times very harsh - the agency claims that "the most probable hypothesis of the accident is that it was caused by a fire that broke out in the cockpit during the cruise phase, which spread quickly leading to the loss of control of the aircraft ". Bea also stresses that "it is necessary to have a final report of the incident in order to be able to present the differences of opinion to the Egyptians as established by international standards". Having this document also serves to improve safety in the sector as it always happens after every tragedy in the skies.
Foto Relatives of the victims of flight MS804 in front of the Egyptian embassy in Paris
The family members
"6 years later we are torn between hoping to know the truth and feeling tired because things are not going as they should," says Julie Heslouin. Will the truth ever be found out? «I don't know - she replies -, I myself oscillate between optimism and pessimism. The French authorities, whom we have met several times, have listened to us, but the fact is that there is no progress. Without an effective collaboration from Egypt, without being able to hear the people involved in the maintenance, it becomes almost impossible to get to the bottom of this story ".