EgyptAir alerts baffle experts as fire or bomb both possible

It could have been a fire, a bomb, a cascading electrical failure — or something else altogether.

The first hard evidence about what brought down EgyptAir Flight 804 last week — a string of seven error messages sent automatically minutes before the Airbus A320 plunged into the Mediterranean — has done little to narrow down what happened, according to aircraft specialists and accident investigators.

“Something's wrong. We know that,” Michael Barr, an accident investigation instructor at the University of Southern California, said in an interview. “Until they get the data recorder back, it would be hard to come up with an idea.”

An Egyptian forensics investigator said Tuesday that those body parts retrieved from the sea so far have been small. That might suggest some sort of explosion, he said, though bodies can also be ripped apart when an aircraft disintegrates following a structural failure, or hits the ground or sea at high velocity.

Uncertainty over what caused the May 19 crash is delaying any response by policy makers, whether it be a hunt for a terrorist who planted a bomb, or revising safety procedures to prevent similar types of accidents in the future. The outcome of the investigation could bring starkly different results.

The error messages that emerged over the weekend include two separate alarms indicating smoke, suggesting there could have been a fire before the flight from Paris to Cairo plunged into the water, killing all 66 aboard. One of the alarms reported that smoke had been detected in the compartment directly beneath the cockpit where the plane's computers and avionics equipment are located. The other was in a lavatory.

Other alerts showed unspecified problems with flight computers, including one that pilots use to set flight parameters such as altitude, and another that's part of the Airbus's complex flight-control system. Both computers were located in the electronics bay where smoke was detected.

The error messages were confirmed by the French accident investigation agency BEA over the weekend after they were first reported on the Aviation Herald website.