EgyptAir Flight 804: the four scenarios
I’d say that this just about covers it:
There are broadly four areas investigators will consider as they probe the disappearance of EgyptAir Flight 804 over the Mediterranean shortly before it began its descent to Cairo: Did it crash or explode due to pilot error, a technical malfunction, a smuggled bomb or an inside act of sabotage?
The “smuggled bomb” could involve a passenger carrying a bomb on purpose, or a passenger doing it unknowingly because someone else put a bomb in that passenger’s luggage or among his/her possessions, or ground crew being responsible for the placement of the bomb (that latter scenario would make it both a smuggled bomb and an “inside act of sabotage”). Other “inside acts of sabotage” could include something on the order of last March’s Germanwings crash in which co-pilot Andreas Lubitz locked the captain out of the cockpit and then intentionally flew the plane into a mountain, or 1999’s EgyptAir Flight 990 which is thought to have been the result of deliberate actions of the relief first officer who caused the plane to crash near Nantucket.
One must be careful with all these theories, particularly ones that might slander good people (the crew) who are recently deceased and whose families are in deep grief. But unfortunately—very unfortunately—they all have to be considered, including what used to be the unthinkably shocking idea of pilot intention. Previous incidents have made it all too clear that such a thing is possible.
It does seem, however, that since wreckage has been sighted and the Mediterranean is not incredibly deep, the plane’s black boxes will be recovered and much more information should be available before too long.
RIP.
The only question is how did The Religion of Peaceâ„¢ pull this one off.
ISIS was clamoring for such an attack for the last weeks.
Just as ISIS did prior to the Russian aircraft atrocity.
New info. The ACARS (automated flight systems data sent to satellites) sent a message that there was smoke and heat in the electronics bay, the blue room just aft of the cockpit and in the cockpit itself.
If this was a slow developing fire, the pilots would have had time to don oxygen masks and do the check list for fighting the fire. That is the expected scenario in a fire that occurs due to an equipment malfunction. This whole thing, from fire and smoke detection to the airplane veering sharply left and then entering a steep right spiral, happened in two minutes. That leads me to think the malfunction was due to some kind of explosion that affected the control system. The smoke and fire detection sent by ACARS would have been incidental to the primary cause of the failure – an explosion. Bomb in a bag in the forward baggage compartment? Bomb smuggled into the blue room by an aircraft cleaner, passenger, or?
I would not rule out an equipment failure completely, but the info so far points to some sort of explosion that affected the control system and set a fire in the area of the forward blue room and cockpit.
Will some Islamic terror group claim credit? So far none has stepped forward, which is kind of unusual but not unheard of.