The latest news on EgyptAir Flight 804 from Paris to Cairo, carrying 66 people, which Egyptian officials say crashed early Thursday into the Mediterranean Sea off the Greek island of Crete.
A retired weapons developer says it looks increasingly unlikely that a structural failure is behind the crash of EgyptAir Flight 804.
Retired Maj. Gen. Robert Latiff, an expert on aerospace systems and emerging weapons technologies at the University of Notre Dame, says while it’s too early to tell for certain, a structural failure for the Airbus A320 plane is “vanishingly improbable.”
He says “a plane in straight and level flight at 37,000 feet is a pretty benign situation.”
Latiff says “sabotage is possible, and if there were lax controls at airports and loose hiring and security policies, increasingly likely.”
Officials say EgyptAir Flight 804 from Paris to Cairo crashed early Thursday with 66 people on board.
Meanwhile, Egypt’s former civil aviation minister says that if it’s confirmed the EgyptAir plane swerved before it crashed, this means that “something happened that forced the pilots to lose control over the plane.”
Mustafa Kamel told The Associated Press that the debris from the plane and the black box, if recovered, could help uncover “what happened that forced the pilot to lose control.”
He spoke on Thursday after authorities said that the jetliner bound from Paris to Cairo with 66 people aboard had made a mysterious series of extremely abrupt turns before crashing into the Mediterranean Sea.
Kamel says passenger planes are not designed to make a 360-degree swerves while in flight and that something like that is “disproportionate” to a passenger plane’s design.
He says that “these are not warplanes.”
(Source: AP)