CAIRO – Smoke was detected in multiple places inside an EgyptAir plane minutes before it plummeted into the Mediterranean Sea with 66 people on board, French investigators said Saturday, citing messages from the plane’s automatic detection system.
Sebastien Barthe, a spokesman for the French civil aviation investigation agency told the Associated Press that the messages “generally mean the start of a fire.”
French and Egyptian authorities, working around the clock to find the flight data recorders, cautioned that the cause of the crash remained unclear. Also Saturday, Egypt’s military spokesman posted on Facebook what he said were the first images of debris recovered by naval ships in the Mediterranean, including a life vest, fabric from seat cushions and parts of the aircraft exterior. The images have not been verified by other nations investigating the crash.
EgyptAir Flight 804 departed Paris’s Charles de Gaulle airport at 11:09 p.m. Wednesday and was bound for Cairo when it crashed into the sea early Thursday. The messages signaling the aircraft detected smoke aboard the flight were first reported Friday by the industry publication Aviation Herald. The website said smoke appeared in a lavatory near the cockpit, and that the information was transmitted through the plane’s Aircraft Communications Addressing and Reporting System.
“We are drawing no conclusions from this,” Barthe told AP. “Everything else is pure conjecture.”
The plane’s abrupt turns and ultimate descent into the Mediterranean has raised fears the flight was targeted by terrorists, but no group has so far claimed responsibility for the crash.
The discovery Friday of human remains, wreckage and passenger belongings added momentum to the quest to unravel the mystery of why the Airbus A320 suddenly dropped from the sky, probably killing all 66 people aboard.
Without the bulk of the fuselage and flight recorder, the tragedy has offered few tangible clues.
On Friday, Egyptian naval ships backed by U.S. and European search aircraft scoured the Mediterranean, concentrating the hunt on an area about 180 miles off the coast of the Egyptian city of Alexandria, according to an Egyptian military spokesman, a day after earlier reports of located debris were retracted. If more debris is located in the area in coming days, it could signal a major shift in the investigation into how the plane, traveling at a cruising altitude of 37,000 feet, could have suddenly swerved, flown in a circle, then plunged thousands of feet, losing contact with air controllers before vanishing.
Experts now have a target zone to try to peer below the waves in hopes of finding the flight recorders and what remains of the fuselage. But the presumed crash site covers some of the deepest water in the Mediterranean, with a seabed basin that is more than 10,000 feet below the surface in some places. The currents are also strong, which could complicate efforts to pinpoint the wreckage.
In Athens, more details about the reported Egyptian finds were given by Greek Defense Minister Panos Kammenos, who said a seat, luggage and “a body part” were spotted. The European Space Agency, meanwhile, said a satellite detected a possible oil slick in the same area. Greek state television said the recoveries were made about 115 miles from the plane’s last tracked position.
A day after a top official in Egypt said that terrorism appeared more likely than a catastrophic technical malfunction, French Foreign Minister Jean-Marc Ayrault said on France-2 television that there is “absolutely no indication” of the cause of the crash. No group has claimed responsibility for the fallen plane.
U.S. officials also urged caution on drawing conclusions about the cause of the crash. Analysts at the CIA and other agencies, meanwhile, have worked with foreign counterparts to scrutinize the flight’s passenger list and crew roster. Three French civil-aviation experts arrived in Cairo on Friday to assist with the investigation, reported Egypt’s flagship state-owned newspaper, Al-Ahram.
On Saturday, French investigators confirmed that smoke was detected in the plane in multiple locations before it crashed, AP reported.
The discovery of the debris and passenger remains diminished already slim hopes of finding any survivors. There were about a dozen nationalities on board, with Egypt and France suffering the greatest losses. In Cairo on Friday, hundreds of relatives and friends of the missing gathered in mosques for memorial services, offering solemn prayers and tears.
The EgyptAir flight had flown across northern Italy and into Greek airspace, where air traffic controllers later noted that the plane’s pilot “was in good spirits” before entering Egyptian airspace. Minutes later, the plane veered violently to the east, dropping from 37,000 feet to 15,000, according to Kammenos. At one point, the plane made a “360-degree turn” before disappearing from radar and crashing into the Mediterranean.
