SHARM EL-SHEIKH, Egypt, 5 January 2004 — Search teams hunted with nets yesterday for the remains of 148 people, mostly French tourists, who died in an Egyptian plane crash France said was most likely due to a loss of power.
Egypt defended the safety of its aircraft after Swiss aviation authorities said they had banned from Swiss airspace the operators of the Boeing 737 which plunged into the Red Sea minutes after take-off from the tourist resort Sharm El-Sheikh on Saturday. The victims included 133 French tourists.
Swiss aviation officials in Zurich said the Egyptian airline had been banned from Swiss airspace since October 2002 due to safety concerns. “During an inspection we discovered that the airline was a danger to aviation security,” said Celestine Perissinotto, a spokeswoman for the Swiss Federal Office for Civil Aviation. She declined to give further details. “If a company is forbidden (to fly over national airspace)...that means the problems are serious,” she said.
An official of Egypt’s Civil Aviation Ministry said all planes belonging to private Egyptian companies were subject to regular inspections and no plane was allowed to take off until its safety had been checked.
As boats and planes scanned the Red Sea for bodies and wreckage, France’s Transport Minister Gilles de Robien said in Paris, while no one could be absolutely certain, all indications pointed to an accident.
“There was no explosion before the crash, no one has claimed responsibility for (an) attack,” he said. “The arguments most commonly set out show that it was simply a loss of power,” he told French radio Europe 1.
French Deputy Foreign Minister Renaud Muselier toured the crash site as France sought to answer what had happened to the plane. France mobilized specialist divers, plane crash investigators and other experts to the resort.
A radar-equipped frigate was due to arrive on Monday to help in the search for “black box” flight recorders, which should help explain what went wrong with the plane after it took off.
Muselier sailed out to the crash site and threw a bouquet of red and white flowers, bearing the Egyptian and French flags, on the water.
Egypt’s Civil Aviation Minister Ahmed Mohamed Shafiq Zaki responded by saying the Swiss had not punished Flash Airlines for safety violations.
The official Egyptian news agency MENA said he denied reports that Switzerland had refused to let Flash Airlines planes land on Swiss territory.
“He said that irresponsible statements should not be made in such circumstances,” the agency added.
Fouad Hassoun, one of the partners in the Flash Group, which owns Flash Airlines, told the Qatar-based television station Al-Jazeera that the Boeing 737 had been properly maintained.
“Before the airplane takes off, everything has to be in order and its papers are fine. I don’t think any airplane could take off if its papers were not fine,” he said.
Meanwhile, a flotilla of boats searched yesterday for bodies and debris. Rescue workers on military and civilian vessels found only small pieces of wreckage and “very few” body parts from the shark-infested waters near the resort of Sharm El-Sheikh.
France joined the recovery effort by dispatching a military surveillance plane, a C-130 military transport plane, a naval frigate and 16 scuba divers from Djibouti.
French Deputy Foreign Minister Renaud Muselier told reporters that the human remains were so badly mangled that “scientific means” would be needed to make identifications.
“We were able to see the bags full of body parts, Muselier said, choking back tears after visiting a hospital morgue. “It was terrible to see.”
The pilot tried to turn back after detecting problems on takeoff and was making the turn when the plane plunged into the sea, French and Egyptian officials said.
Radar images showed the plane turned left as normal after takeoff, straightened out and then turned right before plunging into the sea, Shafeeq said.
