jet4hire
5th Jan 2004, 01:24
This is what I mean in one of my previous post! No border's no Rank's only friendly people in the skies!
Egyptian plane crash kills 148
Web posted at: 1/4/2004 8:4:57
Source ::: Agencies
SHARM EL-SHEIKH: An Egyptian Boeing 737 carrying 148 people, most of them French tourists on New Year family holidays, crashed into the Red Sea here yesterday, killing all on board.
The plane, operated by Egyptian charter company Flash Airlines, disappeared from radar screens minutes after take-off from Sharm el-Sheikh airport at 4.44am (0244 GMT) and crashed into the sea, a few miles to the southeast. The plane was heading for Cairo to refuel, change crew and take on more passengers before flying on to Paris.
The crash came as the United States and Britain were on a heightened air security alert for fear that an airliner could be used for a September 11-style terror attack.
Not a terror act
But both French and Egyptian officials said there was nothing to indicate that the loss of the Flash Airlines Boeing 737 was anything but an accident.“The incident is absolutely not the result of a terrorist act, but is linked to a technical failure of the plane,” said Egyptian Foreign Minister Ahmed Maher. Egypt’s civil aviation minister, Ahmed Mohamed Shafiq Zaki, said the cause of the crash was “entirely technical”.
“There was a problem at take-off,” France’s deputy transport minister Dominique Bussereau told reporters at Paris’s Charles de Gaulle airport, the charter’s final destination. “It tried to turn back and when trying to do this it crashed.”
Zaki said the pilot might have been planning to turn back but did not do so. Technical problems might account for the pilot’s failure to tell the control tower that the plane was in trouble, he said.
The French government said there were 133 French passengers aboard, and a French medical official said many of them were children on family holidays. It said the other two passengers were a Moroccan man and a Japanese woman. Officials said there had been 13 Egyptian crew aboard, some of them off duty.
One of the victims was the crew’s chief flight attendant, Nermin Mohammed, who was pregnant and who had married just six months ago, according to her mother, who joined other sobbing relatives at Cairo airport.
The plane crashed in the Strait of Tiran, between the Sinai peninsula and Saudi Arabia, where the water is hundreds of metres (feet) deep — too deep for divers to reach the flight recording devices, diving school managers said.
Pilot lost control
Zaki said evidence from witnesses and equipment on the ground suggested the crew had lost control shortly after take-off because of a technical fault and crashed while trying to bring the plane back on course at low altitude.
A civil aviation ministry official said the search for the “black box” flight recorder was continuing. He said the plane’s altitude was not high, which made it difficult for the pilot to save the aircraft and return safely to the airport, adding that the Boeing had undergone the required tests and was capable of flying.
Six bodies recovered
Egyptian television showed air force planes, navy ships and a helicopter searching the Red Sea, while Italian warships stationed in the area joined the operation. Rescue workers have recovered remains of six people.
Eyewitnesses said they were finding pieces of human bodies. “There’s lots of personal stuff, small bags and toys. We have collected very small pieces of the plane but the body of the plane has sunk.”
French President Jacques Chirac telephoned his Egyptian counterpart Hosni Mubarak to obtain details of the crash and expressed his “deepest shock” at the tragedy. French Prime Minister Jean-Pierre Raffarin and Transport Minister Gilles de Robien rushed to Charles de Gaulle airport, where distraught friends and relatives who had gone to meet the flight were being told of the crash.
Flash Airlines is an Egyptian charter airline based in Cairo and flying to European cities. It flew two Boeing 737-300 planes manufactured in 1993, according to its website.
It was the third crash on the African continent of a Boeing 737 in less than nine months and came after an older Boeing 727 plunged into the sea after takeoff in the tiny West African state of Benin on December 25, killing 139 people, many of them Lebanese.
Hope, that some day we learn!
Cheers!
:cool:
Egyptian plane crash kills 148
Web posted at: 1/4/2004 8:4:57
Source ::: Agencies
SHARM EL-SHEIKH: An Egyptian Boeing 737 carrying 148 people, most of them French tourists on New Year family holidays, crashed into the Red Sea here yesterday, killing all on board.
The plane, operated by Egyptian charter company Flash Airlines, disappeared from radar screens minutes after take-off from Sharm el-Sheikh airport at 4.44am (0244 GMT) and crashed into the sea, a few miles to the southeast. The plane was heading for Cairo to refuel, change crew and take on more passengers before flying on to Paris.
The crash came as the United States and Britain were on a heightened air security alert for fear that an airliner could be used for a September 11-style terror attack.
Not a terror act
But both French and Egyptian officials said there was nothing to indicate that the loss of the Flash Airlines Boeing 737 was anything but an accident.“The incident is absolutely not the result of a terrorist act, but is linked to a technical failure of the plane,” said Egyptian Foreign Minister Ahmed Maher. Egypt’s civil aviation minister, Ahmed Mohamed Shafiq Zaki, said the cause of the crash was “entirely technical”.
“There was a problem at take-off,” France’s deputy transport minister Dominique Bussereau told reporters at Paris’s Charles de Gaulle airport, the charter’s final destination. “It tried to turn back and when trying to do this it crashed.”
Zaki said the pilot might have been planning to turn back but did not do so. Technical problems might account for the pilot’s failure to tell the control tower that the plane was in trouble, he said.
The French government said there were 133 French passengers aboard, and a French medical official said many of them were children on family holidays. It said the other two passengers were a Moroccan man and a Japanese woman. Officials said there had been 13 Egyptian crew aboard, some of them off duty.
One of the victims was the crew’s chief flight attendant, Nermin Mohammed, who was pregnant and who had married just six months ago, according to her mother, who joined other sobbing relatives at Cairo airport.
The plane crashed in the Strait of Tiran, between the Sinai peninsula and Saudi Arabia, where the water is hundreds of metres (feet) deep — too deep for divers to reach the flight recording devices, diving school managers said.
Pilot lost control
Zaki said evidence from witnesses and equipment on the ground suggested the crew had lost control shortly after take-off because of a technical fault and crashed while trying to bring the plane back on course at low altitude.
A civil aviation ministry official said the search for the “black box” flight recorder was continuing. He said the plane’s altitude was not high, which made it difficult for the pilot to save the aircraft and return safely to the airport, adding that the Boeing had undergone the required tests and was capable of flying.
Six bodies recovered
Egyptian television showed air force planes, navy ships and a helicopter searching the Red Sea, while Italian warships stationed in the area joined the operation. Rescue workers have recovered remains of six people.
Eyewitnesses said they were finding pieces of human bodies. “There’s lots of personal stuff, small bags and toys. We have collected very small pieces of the plane but the body of the plane has sunk.”
French President Jacques Chirac telephoned his Egyptian counterpart Hosni Mubarak to obtain details of the crash and expressed his “deepest shock” at the tragedy. French Prime Minister Jean-Pierre Raffarin and Transport Minister Gilles de Robien rushed to Charles de Gaulle airport, where distraught friends and relatives who had gone to meet the flight were being told of the crash.
Flash Airlines is an Egyptian charter airline based in Cairo and flying to European cities. It flew two Boeing 737-300 planes manufactured in 1993, according to its website.
It was the third crash on the African continent of a Boeing 737 in less than nine months and came after an older Boeing 727 plunged into the sea after takeoff in the tiny West African state of Benin on December 25, killing 139 people, many of them Lebanese.
Hope, that some day we learn!
Cheers!
:cool: