CAIRO, Nov. 2 (UPI) — The Kogalymavia Flight 9268 crash in Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula was caused by “external factors,” an airline official said Monday.
“We rule out a technical fault of the plane or a pilot error. The only explainable cause is physical impact on the aircraft,” said Metrojet Deputy General Director Alexander Smirnov.
People familiar with the investigation said the plane’s tail section was discovered separate from the rest of the debris, suggesting it separated from the plane while in mid-air. The plane was built in 1997 and repaired in 2001 after a tail strike, in which the rear end of the plane’s fuselage touched the runway on takeoff.
Oksana Golovina, a Kogalymavia spokeswoman, said Monday “the airplane was 100 percent ready to fly, in working order. Otherwise it wouldn’t have taken off.”
The plane sent no distress signal prior to the crash.
There have been conflicting causes given for the crash thus far. Though the airline blamed “external factors” for the crash, Russian authorities suggested a mechanical failure.
The large area of dispersal of the plane’s wreckage, about 8 square miles, suggests “It’s very hard to believe the airplane would have come apart without some major structural or maintenance problem,” industry consultant John Cox, a U.S. pilot’s union crash investigator, told The Wall Street Journal.
Despite claims by a group affiliated with the Egyptian wing of the Islamic State that it shot down the jet from 31,000 feet, both Russia and Egypt said no group in the area had the weaponry to strike it.
There were no survivors, and several airlines cancelled their flights over the Sinai after the crash.
