DEBRIS SIFTED FOR CLUES TO JET CRASH
As investigators comb the wreckage of Russia’s Metrojet charter Flight 9268, speculation about why the jet came apart in the air and plunged 31,000 feet into the Sinai desert includes pilot error, technical problems and terrorist attacks.
The crash 23 minutes after takeoff Saturday killed all 224 passengers and crew aboard the Metrojet Airbus 321200 en route to St. Petersburg, Russia, from the Red Sea resort town of Sharm el-Sheik, Egypt.
Metrojet blamed “external impact” Monday and said neither the crew nor mechanical failure played a role in the air disaster. “We (are) excluding technical problems and rejecting human error,” Alexander Smirnov, deputy director for Metrojet, said in Moscow.
An affiliate of the Islamic State group operating in the Sinai claimed responsibility for bringing down the jet.
Experts called conclusions premature. The answers lay in the flight data and voice recorders recovered immediately after the crash and the pattern of wreckage strewn over the Egyptian desert. The full investigation to determine what caused the crash could take a year or more.
Information recovered from the recorders “in a matter of days” will point the investigation toward the most likely scenario, said Al Diehl, an author and former investigator with the National Transportation Safety Board.
The Egyptian government said militants in the region using shoulderfired anti-aircraft weapons could not reach the Metrojet flight at 31,000 feet in the air.