EgyptAir crash debris recovered

Plane parts, human remains pulled from Mediterranean

An engineer stands in front of a C-130 HAUP of the Hellenic Air Force, which took part and is on stand by, in the searching operation of the missing Egypt plane, at the military air base of Kastelli on the southern Greek island of Crete on Friday.
An engineer stands in front of a C-130 HAUP of the Hellenic Air Force, which took part and is on stand by, in the searching operation of the missing Egypt plane, at the military air base of Kastelli on the southern Greek island of Crete on Friday.

CAIRO -- Search crews found human remains, luggage and seats from the crashed EgyptAir jetliner Friday but face a potentially more complex task in locating bigger pieces of wreckage and the black boxes vital to determining why the plane plunged into the Mediterranean.

photo

AP

Imam Samir Abdel Bary consoles film director Osman Abu Laban, who lost four relatives, all victims of Thursday’s EgyptAir plane crash, after prayers for the dead, at the al Thawrah Mosque in Cairo on Friday.

Looking for clues to what brought down EgyptAir Flight 804 with 66 people aboard, investigators pored over the passenger list and questioned ground-crew members at Charles de Gaulle Airport in Paris, where the plane took off.

The Airbus A320 had been cruising normally in clear skies on a nighttime flight to Cairo early Thursday when it suddenly lurched left, then right, spun all the way around and plummeted 38,000 feet into the sea, never issuing a distress signal.

In Egypt, home to 30 of the victims, grieving families and friends wondered whether their loved ones would ever be recovered. Many gathered in mosques for Salat al-Ghaib, or "prayers for the absent," held for the dead whose bodies have not been found.

"This is what is ripping our hearts apart when we think about it. When someone you love so much dies, at least you have a body to bury. But we have no body," said Sherif al-Metanawi, a childhood friend of the pilot, Mohammed Shoukair.

Egyptian authorities said they believe terrorism is a more likely explanation than equipment failure, and some aviation experts said the erratic flight suggests a bomb blast or a struggle in the cockpit. But so far no hard evidence has emerged.

No militant group has claimed to have brought down the aircraft. That is a contrast to the downing of a Russian jet in October over Egypt's Sinai Peninsula that killed 224 people. In that case, the Islamic State group's branch in Sinai issued a claim of responsibility within hours.

Three European security officials said the passenger manifest for Flight 804 contained no names on terrorism watch lists. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the investigation. The manifest was leaked online and has not been verified by the airline.

Further checks are being conducted on relatives of the passengers.

Of the 66 people aboard, 56 were passengers, including two infants and one child. Seven were crew members, and three were security personnel.

No Americans were on the flight, according to the airline. Among those aboard, it said, were 30 Egyptians, 15 French nationals, two Iraqis, and one passenger each from Algeria, Belgium, Canada, Chad, Kuwait, Portugal, Saudi Arabia, Sudan and the United Kingdom.

French aviation investigators have begun to check and question all baggage handlers, maintenance workers, gate agents and other ground crew members at De Gaulle Airport who had a direct or indirect link to the plane before it took off, according to a French judicial official. The official was not authorized to discuss the investigation and spoke on condition of anonymity.

Experts said answers will come only with an examination of the wreckage and the plane's cockpit voice and flight data recorders, commonly known as black boxes.

A possible cause could have been a fire, The Aviation Herald, a website that covers the civil-aviation industry, reported Friday.

The publication cited information transmitted through the plane's Aircraft Communications Addressing and Reporting System, which transmits data from the plane to the ground in the form of a series of messages. Those messages showed that smoke was detected in the plan's lavatory near the cockpit, according to the report.

A French Navy patrol boat left the port of Toulon on Friday with sonar that can pick up the underwater "pings" emitted by the recorders. But it will take the vessel two or three days to reach the search zone.

Ships and planes from Egypt, Greece, Britain, France, the United States and Cyprus have taken part in the search for what's left of Flight 804, scouring the waters roughly halfway between the Greek island of Crete and the Egyptian coast.

The sea is about 8,000 to 10,000 feet deep in that area. The pings can be detected up to a depth of 20,000 feet.

"Its batteries allow it to transmit for 30 days," Athanassios Binis, head of Greece's aviation accident investigation agency, said on state TV. Once a vessel detects the recorders, "the next step would be to pinpoint it and go down with special equipment to recover it."

Egyptian searchers found the first debris from the crash about 180 miles north of the Egyptian coastal city Alexandria. Civil Aviation Minister Sherif Fathi informed relatives there were no survivors, the Al-Masry Al-Youm newspaper said.

More details began to emerge about the passengers on the flight. The British news media reported that the only Briton on the plane was Richard Osman, 40, a father of two, whose daughter was born less than a month ago.

Osman Abu Laban, a Lebanese film director who lives in Egypt, lost four members of his extended family in the crash. In a post on his Facebook page, Abu Laban announced funeral prayers Friday afternoon at a Cairo mosque for his aunt and uncle, their son and the son's wife.

Information for this article was contributed by Maggie Michael, Paisley Dodds, Nicholas Paphitis and Sam Magdy of The Associated Press; by Heba Habib and Erin Cunningham of The Washington Post; and by Kareem Fahim, Marc Santora and staff members.

A Section on 05/21/2016

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