224 on Russian plane die in crash in Egypt’s Sinai
SHARM EL-SHEIKH, Egypt — A Russian aircraft carrying 224 people crashed Saturday in a remote mountainous region in the Sinai Peninsula about 20 minutes after taking off from a Red Sea resort, the Egyptian government said. There were no survivors.
The cause of the crash was not known, but two European airlines announced that they would stop flying over the area for safety reasons after a local affiliate of the extremist Islamic State group claimed that it “brought down” the aircraft. Russia’s transport minister dismissed that claim as not credible.
Almost everyone on board the Airbus-A321-200
operated by the Moscow-based Metrojet airline was Russian. Ukraine said four of its citizens were passengers. Russian officials did not give a specific breakdown of the 217 passengers’ ages and sexes but said 25 were children. There were seven crew members.
A civil aviation ministry statement said the plane’s wreckage was found in the Hassana area some 44 miles south of the city of el-Arish, in the general area of northern Sinai where Egyptian security forces have for years battled local Islamic militants. In recent months, those militants claimed allegiance to the Islamic State group.
The ministry said the plane took off from the resort city of Sharm el-Sheikh shortly before 6 a.m. for St. Petersburg in Russia and disappeared from radar screens 23 minutes later.
Egyptian Prime Minister Sherif Ismail toured the crash site and later told a Cairo news conference that 129 bodies had been recovered.
Ismail said the plane’s flight recorder would be scrutinized as investigators try to determine what caused the crash. Russian investigators were expected to arrive in Egypt today.
Natalya Trukhacheva, identified as the wife of co-pilot Sergei Trukachev, said in an interview with Russian state-controlled NTV that her husband had complained about the plane’s condition.
She said a daughter “called him up before he flew out. He complained before the flight that the technical condition of the aircraft left much to be desired.”
One Egyptian official, Ayman al-Muqadem of the government’s Aviation Incidents Committee, said that before the plane lost contact with air traffic controllers the pilot had radioed and said the aircraft was experiencing technical problems and that he intended to try to land at the nearest airport.
The state-run Ahram Gate website also reported, citing Egyptian security officials, that preliminary investigations indicated the plane went down because of a technical problem.
In a statement on its website, Metrojet said the A321200 aircraft was in good shape and that the pilot was experienced. It identified the captain as Valery Nemov and said he had 12,000 hours of flying experience, including 3,860 hours in A321s.
Russian Transport Minister Maxim Sokolov said officials from Moscow and Cairo were in contact over the crash. The Egyptian officials, he said, had not confirmed the claim by Islamic State militants that they “brought down a Russian plane over Sinai state with more than 220 Russian crusaders on board.” The militant group did not provide any evidence to back up its claim.
“Based on our contacts with the Egyptian side, the information that the airplane was shot down must not be considered reliable,” Sokolov said, according to a report by the Interfax news agency.
An English-language statement issued by the office of Egyptian President Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi spoke of Russian President Vladimir Putin commending the efforts made by authorities in Egypt “to uncover the circumstances surrounding the incident.” The statement said the two leaders spoke by telephone and agreed to coordinate investigation efforts.
While Egypt is leading the investigation because the crash occurred on its territory, France’s air safety authority said it is sending two officials to the crash site, and six Airbus investigators will go as well, according to an emailed statement. Russia and Germany are also sending people, the safety authority said.
Militants in northern Sinai have not to date shot down commercial airliners or fighter jets. There have been media reports that they have acquired Russian shoulder-fired, anti-aircraft missiles. But these types of missiles can be effective only against low-flying aircraft or helicopters. The Russian airliner was cruising at 31,000 feet when contact was lost with air traffic controllers, according to Egyptian aviation officials.
But two European airlines — Germany’s Lufthansa and Air France — were not taking any chances. Both announced Saturday that they would immediately stop flying over Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula for safety reasons until the cause of the crash is determined. Their aircraft would take alternate routes to reach destinations in the region.
Spokesmen for the airlines spoke anonymously in line with their respective companies’ regulations.
Egypt’s foreign minister, Sameh Shukri, warned unidentified “foreign” countries against taking measures that reflect speculation on the cause of the crash. “That will impact the Egyptian economy and lead to damages. These nations must consider this as well as their relations with Egypt,” he said.
A DAY OF MOURNING
Friends and relatives of the crash victims were gathering Saturday at a hotel near St. Petersburg’s Pulkovo airport.
Yulia Zaitseva said her friends, newlyweds Elena Rodina and Alexander Krotov, both 33, were on the flight. Zaitseva said Rodina, her friend for 20 years, “really wanted to go to Egypt, though I told her, ‘Why the hell do you want to go to Egypt?’”
“She was a very good friend who was ready to give everything to other people. To lose such a friend is like having your hand cut off,” Zaitseva said, adding that Rodina’s parents feel “like their lives are over.”
Putin declared today a day of mourning, “expressing sorrow for the victims and condolences to their families and friends,” the Kremlin said on its website.
Russian airlines became infamous for poor safety in the early years after the 1991 collapse of the Soviet Union, which caused severe financial troubles and regulatory disorder. There have been at least 100 deadly passenger plane crashes involving aircraft operated by Russian airlines, that have killed more than 2,000 since 1991, according to Aviation Safety Network data.
Although accidents have diminished in recent years, crashes persist, many of them blamed on human error.
According to Russian news agencies, the flight was chartered by the St. Petersburg-based Brisco tour company. Airbus said in a statement that the plane was built in 1997 and had accumulated more than 56,000 hours of flight time. Metrojet acquired the plane in 2012, the statement said.
Officers from Russia’s top investigative body raided the offices of Metrojet and Brisco on Saturday, searching the premises and questioning employees. Investigative Committee spokesman Vladimir Markin said agents also took samples of fuel from the airport in the Russian city of Samara, where the plane stopped Friday before heading to Sharm el-Sheikh, where it had overnighted.
Roughly 3 million Russian tourists go to Egypt every year, mostly to Red Sea resorts in Sinai or in mainland Egypt. About a fifth of all tourists visiting Egypt are from Russia, making it the largest source of vacationers to the North African country.
“It is too premature to detect the impact this will have on tourism. We need to know what happened first,” Tourism Ministry spokesman Rasha Azazi said.
Information for this article was contributed by Brian Rohan, Hamza Hendawi, Merrit Kennedy, Nour Youssef, Irina Titova, James Heintz, Kirsten Grieshaber and Sylvie Corbet of The Associated Press; by Tamim Elyan, Elena Mazneva, Ahmed Feteha, Abdel Latif Wahba, Tarek El-Tablawy, Alan Levin and Andrea Rothman of Bloomberg News; and by Erin Cunningham, Heba Habib and Andrew Roth of The Washington Post.