An Egyptian aviation official said the voice recorder from the cockpit indicated that the mood there was relaxed in the minutes before the plane veered off course.
Crew members were playing music and chatting amiably when the pilot, Capt. Muhammad Shoukair, 36, suddenly said there was a fire on board and asked the co-pilot, Muhammad Mamdouh Assem, 24, to get an extinguisher. That was the last human sound the recorder captured.
Information from the flight data recorder — as well as a series of automated alerts that were sent by the plane to a maintenance base on the ground — suggests that, in the minutes before radar contact was lost, heavy smoke was detected in a lavatory as well as near the cockpit. Investigators have also retrieved blackened pieces of metal from the front of the plane that indicate a high-temperature fire.
Still, the source of such a fire remains unclear.
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/07/23/wo...rash-fire.html