Rescuers on Sunday resumed searching for bodies after a charter jet full of French tourists crashed into the Red Sea, killing all 148 people aboard. Switzerland, meanwhile, revealed that it had banned the airline more than a year ago because of safety problems.

Flash Airlines flight FSH604, bound for Paris with a stopover in Cairo, crashed early Saturday, minutes after taking off from the airport at the Egyptian resort of Sharm el-Sheik. Officials blamed mechanical failure.

Search crews on military and civilian vessels have found only small pieces of wreckage and "very few" body parts from the shark-infested waters near the resort, an official of Egypt's Environment Protection Department said on condition of anonymity.

Egyptian officials said the Flash Airlines jet, an 11-year-old Boeing 737, had checked out fine before the flight. But Swiss aviation authorities said Sunday they had banned Flash from flying into Switzerland for more than a year because of technical worries. "A series of safety shortcomings showed up in a plane of Flash Airlines during a routine security check at Zurich Airport in October 2002," Celestine Perissinotto, spokeswoman for the Swiss Federal Office for Civil Aviation, told The Associated Press.

She declined to go into detail and didn't know what type of plane had problems in Switzerland. Flash Airlines, which has been in business for six years, said in Egypt that the Boeing 737 that crashed was one of two it owned.

The Egyptian government has said the crash was an accident apparently caused by a mechanical problem. It came amid worldwide security alerts for terror threats in the skies.

Search teams also were seeking the "black box" flight data recorders to provide more details about the cause of the crash, Egyptian Aviation Minister Ahmed Shafeeq said.

Tourists in swimsuits and TV crews with satellite dishes watched from the beach Sunday as searchers circled the waters in small boats.

French Deputy Foreign Minister Renaud Muselier told reporters in Sharm el-Sheik, about 300 miles southeast of Cairo near the southern tip of the Sinai peninsula, that the human remains found were so badly mangled that it would be difficult to identify them.

"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 Saturday.

The environment protection official said rescue workers believed the fuselage of the Boeing 737 was resting in 2,600 feet of water. The depth of the water was hampering search efforts, Shafeeq said.

The search was suspended Saturday night but resumed at daybreak Sunday with four aircraft and 40 boats searching a 4-square-mile expanse of sea.

The governor of South Sinai, Mostafa Afifi, told Egyptian state television that the plane hit the sea so hard that everything shattered. "We can't say that we have found bodies as bodies. We have found 11 to 13 bodies but in pieces," he said.

A French investigation team was expected to arrive later Sunday and French Prime Minister Jean-Pierre Raffarin declared the nation in mourning. The United States also was sending an accident investigator.

A French Foreign Ministry spokesman said 133 French tourists were on the flight. One Japanese, one Moroccan, and 13 Egyptian crew members also were on the flight, Shafeeq said.

Most of the passengers were on a tour organized by FRAM, one of France's largest travel operators. FRAM said it had 125 people - mostly families or groups of friends - on the flight. Some were children.

Shafeeq said Saturday the plane checked out fine before takeoff. "The first indications suggest a technical fault," he said.

Radar images showed that the plane turned left as normal after takeoff, then suddenly straightened out and turned right before plunging into the sea, Shafeeq said.

The jet arrived at the resort early Saturday from Venice, Italy, dropping off passengers in Sharm el-Sheik, the airline said. New passengers then boarded for the flight to Paris via Cairo. The airplane underwent maintenance checks in Norway and the most recent one showed no problems, officials said.

Perissinotto said the Swiss report had been given to the airline and to Egyptian civil aviation authorities.

The airline has been banned from entering or flying over Switzerland since October 2002, but one of its planes was allowed to make a landing in Geneva last year for exceptional reasons, she added.

That plane was supposed to land in Paris but was diverted to Geneva because of bad weather, she said.

Swiss authorities demanded that the airline explain why it needed to land in Geneva, but "these explanations were also insufficient. The situation had not improved," Perissinotto said.

Saturday's crash was Egypt's biggest aviation disaster since 1999, when an EgyptAir jetliner crashed shortly after leaving New York en route to Cairo, killing all 217 people aboard.

LATEST NEWS
10:42 AM CST Monday

Boeing says more time needed to examine crash
David Dinell

The Boeing Co. said it will support an investigation led by Egyptian authorities into the weekend crash of a Wichita-made Boeing 737 aircraft.

The aircraft was operated by Flash Airlines, a private Egyptian charter company. It crashed off the coast of Sharm el-Sheikh Airport, Egypt, minutes after takeoff.

Officials say the airplane, a Boeing 737-300 model, was delivered in October 1992 and had accumulated 17,973 hours of flight time.

Boeing Wichita makes 75 percent of the 737 fuselage plus other parts for the popular aircraft.

The crash killed all 148 on board. Egyptian officials have blamed the crash on a mechanical fault, however, Boeing officials say it is "too early to speculate" on the cause.

http://wichita.bizjournals.com/wichita/stories/2004/01/05/daily5.html

05 Jan 2004 16:21:58 GMT
Airlines body says tour firms must be more choosy

GENEVA, Jan 5 (Reuters) - Tour operators should demand proof of safety audits from charter airlines after an Egyptian plane crashed killing 148 people, most of them French holidaymakers, the International Air Transport Association said on Monday.

An IATA spokesman said that, although the cause of Saturday's disaster in which a Boeing 737 crashed after taking off from Egypt's Red Sea resort of Sharm el-Sheikh was still not known, enough questions had been raised for such reassurance to be needed.

"I think that the tour operators owe this to their customers," William Gaillard said.

There were many reliable companies around the world which provided such services and tour operators ought to insist that airlines demonstrate an audit had been carried out before agreeing contracts with them, he said.

The Egyptian charter firm, Flash Airlines, and Egyptian aviation officials said the Boeing, which had been bound for Cairo and Paris with 133 French tourists and 15 other people, met safety standards.

However, questions emerged after Switzerland said it had banned Flash Airlines from its airspace last year when a safety check found defects in one of two planes operated by the firm.

The Swiss Federal Office for Civil Aviation denied that the cause of the ban was a financial disagreement, as stated by the Egyptian company.

"(The ban was introduced) because there were safety problems on this airplane. It is not a financial problem...it is really (about) safety problems", a spokeswoman said.

The Swiss posted the information on an international airline database called SAFA, prompting France to carry out spot checks on the company's aircraft without finding any faults.

But IATA's Gaillard said that, while spot checks were important, they could not provide absolute guarantees that an airline was doing everything possible to promote safety.

Major airlines, represented by the Geneva-based IATA, spent hundreds of millions of dollars every year in training, maintenance and systems of plane analysis which went beyond the strict demands of national and international norms, he said.

"Obviously, there are airlines that cannot afford that," he added.

http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/L05569100.htm

Searchers Look for Fuselage, Recorders From Plane That Crashed in Red Sea
Monday January 05, 2004 10:52am

All 148 Aboard Killed in Egypt Jet Crash

Sharm el-Sheik, Egypt (AP) - France and Egypt launched a major push Monday to find the fuselage and flight data recorders of the aircraft that crashed into the Red Sea, killing 148 people.

The parts of bodies recovered from the sea so far bore no burns, suggesting there was no explosion on the Egyptian-chartered Boeing 737 that plunged into the sea minutes after takeoff on Saturday, French Deputy Foreign Minister Renaud Muselier said Monday.

The French sent a robot submarine to aid the search, but the deployment of the craft was delayed when Egyptian customs held it up at the airport, French officials said.

Later Monday, the French Embassy said submarine had cleared customs.

The crash came amid world wide fears that terrorists would use an aircraft to stage an atrocity.

But Muselier told France-Info radio, "there is no reason to believe there was an attack." He added he thought the crash, which killed 133 French citizens, was an accident.

Egyptian officials say the crash of the jet, which had just taken off from Sharm el-Sheik for Paris, appears to have been caused by a mechanical problem.

Swiss aviation authorities had banned the carrier, Flash Airlines, after it failed an inspection at Zurich airport in October 2002.

The same month, one of Flash's two Boeings was forced to make an emergency landing in Athens after an engine caught fire.

The chairman of Flash Airlines, Mohamed Nour, told The Associated Press that the company made the necessary improvements and passed a second Swiss inspection - but the Swiss denied this.

Nour said the aircraft that suffered the fire was overhauled and subsequently maintained to international standards.

In an interview published Monday in the Swiss daily Le Matin, a former flight attendant for Swiss International Airlines was quoted as saying he noted several faults when he flew as a passenger on Flash Airlines from Zurich to Sharm el-Sheik about two weeks before the engine fire.

Robert Oesch said some of the cockpit instruments were not working, the pilots' oxygen masks were missing, there weren't enough oxygen tanks, many seats had no life jackets, many seats were ripped, the passenger safety cards were missing from some seats and the pilots were walking around the plane while it was on autopilot.

Oesch told the paper the plane was delayed for eight hours while it was checked by the civil aviation office, but was then allowed to depart.

"I agreed to get on board only because I was convinced that the inspectors had checked everything out carefully, but I admit that I was frightened throughout the flight," Oesch told Le Matin.

Germany's civil aviation authority put Flash Airlines' flying rights under review as a precautionary measure in light of the crash, a spokeswoman said, adding that the company has had flying rights in Germany only since last month.

French Transport Minister Gilles de Robien said Monday on France-Inter radio that Flash Airlines has a good reputation and that all planes "have the same level of security and, probably, if you count the checks, there are a few more for charter companies than for regular companies."

The depth of the Red Sea at the crash site has hampered efforts to retrieve the remains of the aircraft and find the flight data recorders.

A French official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the latest information showed the plane's wreckage no deeper than 1,320 feet, disputing earlier reports that the sea floor was twice as deep.

He said officials were trying to determine whether the wreckage fell to a spot that was 3,300 feet deep, but added, "we don't think it has."

The French began using a frigate, a helicopter, 16 divers and an aircraft equipped with advanced radar and an ultra violet camera to search for the wreckage Monday, said French Embassy spokesman Ahmed Fadhel.

The robot submarine has a video camera and can dive to a maximum of 1,320 feet, Fadhel said.

The Egyptian Navy had six boats in the crash area Monday.

The wife of Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak, Suzanne Mubarak, dropped a wreath on to the water at the site Monday.

"It is a big tragedy and I am here to express condolences to all the families of the victims," she said.

French relatives of the dead are expected to arrive midweek in this resort near the southern end of the Sinai peninsula.

French, Egyptian and Japanese officials laid wreaths at the site Sunday.

So far, about 60 body parts have been recovered and no entire corpse - an indication of the force of the impact of the plane, which suddenly descended from more than 5,000 feet.

Egypt has said the jet, an 11 year old Boeing 737, had checked out fine before the flight.

http://www.wjla.com/news/stories/0104/116682.html

Pretty sparse about this today on German sites. Here's a couple of articles for those who may want to keep a chronology to reference later.

"Die Welt" says signal may have been heard, and that terrorism can't be excluded, "Spiegel" that one engine failed.

The "Spiegel" article is from yesterday.

Another point that may or may not be interesting is that France has sent 500 soldiers to the scene to help in rescue. I don't know that much about rescue logistics to know if that is pertinent or not. This info is from a news ticker, as part of a article summarizing events thus far. I haven't linked it here.

longjack

Signals from the Red Rea

According to information from specialists these could be from the flight recorder of the crashed plane. Search for the victims continues.

Scharm el Scheich - Two days after the crash of an Egyptian charter plane over the Red Sea rescue specialists received signals from the sea which could be from the flight recorder. A radar unit on a robot arm had registered the signals in the late evening, a French diplomat said. It is a positive sign. The search for the wreck and bodies would be continued in the course of the day.

In the catastrophe, all 148 passengers, among them 133 tourists from France, had been killed had on Saturday. The inquiries into the cause of an accident concentrated further on technical defects of the eleven year old Boeing 737 of Flash Airlines. Minister of Transport, Gilles de Robien, confirmed Flash Airlines "good reputation" and warned of rash speculation.

The head of the French flight supervisory authority, Michel Wachenheim, said there wouldn't be any certainty about the cause of the crash before the evaluation of the flight recorder. "We can't exclude an accident or a criminal act." The body parts discovered so far haven't shown any evidence of burning, however; a sign that there wasn't an explosion on board of the Boeing before the crash. AP

Artikel erschienen am 6. Jan 2004

"Die Welt"....Signale aus dem Roten Meer

No Indications of an Attack

The inquiries into the plane crash in El sheikh haven't yielded any indications of a terrorist attack so far. According to information from the French government, the retrieved bodies don't show the evidence of burning in order to conclude that. Thereby, an on board explosion has to be excluded.

Paris - Statements of eyewitnesses, which indicate an explosion, are lacking so far, said the undersecretary in the State Department, Renaud Muselier, today, in Paris. "There isn't an apparent reason for the assumption that this was an attack."

As a cause of the crash, the failure of one of the two jet engines is suspected. A French frigate, 16 divers, a helicopter and a special airplane are involved in the rescue together with Egyptian helpers. According to information from the French embassy in Cairo, the plane's wreckage shall not have slipped into a 1000 meter deep trench as had been feared.

Charter airline Flash Airlines has had to ward off accusations of not being technically reliable after several emergency landings. Data evaluation of the flight recorder, which still must be salvaged, should provide information about the cause of the crash. 148 people died in the crash - most of them were French vacationers.

05.01.2004

"Spiegel-Online"....Keine Hinweise auf Anschlag

Translated by longjack

Excerpted from: www.airlinesafety.com/editorials/AMR587.htm

The Crash of American Airlines 587:

Accident or Terrorism?

It isn't any wonder so many fear this tragedy to be yet another act of terrorism straight from the evil mind of Osama Bin Laden. However, what we know so far doesn't seem to add up to the kind of crash that would be produced by a deliberate act of sabotage.

All airliners are design-certified to be able to continue to climb, at maximum certified gross weight and at the most critical time in the takeoff profile, in the event of a total loss of power from one engine.

Then, why did that plane crash?

Witnesses were said to have seen smoke and flames trailing from one engine, and finally observing that engine fall off, shortly before the crash. In addition, a loud "explosion" sound was also reported by ground witnesses, prior to the crash. That led to initial speculation that engine failure was the cause of this crash.

When thrust is lost from one engine, the pilot must quickly act by pushing in the rudder and rolling in aileron, towards the side of the remaining good engine. If a pilot fails to respond in that manner, the plane would roll upside down and total control would quickly be lost.

The rudder is attached to the trailing edge of the vertical stabilizer. When a vertical stabilizer breaks free from a plane, the rudder goes with it. At that point, the only way a pilot could prevent the plane from rolling over on its back, is by retarding the throttle on the remaining good engine. With the power from that good engine no longer available to the pilot, he would have no choice but to descend towards mother earth. If he tried to arrest that descent, by pushing the throttle forward again, the plane would start to roll, because the rudder was gone. Caught between a rock and a hard place, a pilot could only try to extend his glide to a certain crash, by advancing the thrust lever no more than his limited aileron roll control would permit.

...

Pictures of the vertical stabilizer, as it was lifted from Jamaica Bay, revealed a very clean break at the bottom edge, where it had been bolted to the fuselage. It looked pristine, as if it was being moved from a production line to be mated to a new production fuselage. Without any visible damage to that stabilizer, one could not reasonably conclude it had been ripped away by physical contact with other parts flying off the plane. Neither would that pristine condition allow for a terrorist bomb inside of the fuselage, as a sensible explanation. The "black boxes" (CVR and FDR) were found in the main crash site area, indicating the rest of the tail section, below the departed vertical stabilizer/rudder, remained attached to the fuselage. That would tend to indicate a bomb was not the cause of the stabilizer/rudder separation from the fuselage.

...

It now seems the failure of the stabilizer/rudder is the key to analyzing the causal factors in this accident. Could it have been an act of sabotage? Nothing can be ruled out at this early stage of the investigation, but I see that to be a very remote possibility. Human failure in the design, operation, or maintenance of the airplane is much more likely.

November 14, 2001

Robert J. Boser
Editor-in-Chief
AirlineSafety.Com

From: www.aviationnow.com/content/publication/awst/20021104/avi_air.htm

Aviation Week & Space Technology:
November 4, 2002
AA587 Hearing: Rudder
'Key' To Solving Mystery
FRANCES FIORINO and MICHAEL A. DORNHEIM/WASHINGTON
Investigators remain puzzled by A300-600R flight crew's reaction to mild wake encounter
Last week's NTSB public hearing into the American Airlines Flight 587 accident left the main question unanswered--why did the Airbus A300-600R's rudder move from stop to stop five times, causing the vertical stabilizer to be torn from the transport?
The hearing proceeded with the implicit assumption that a crewman was moving the rudder, and not a system malfunction. "To date, investigators have found no indications of any rudder system anomalies, but investigation in this area continues," said Robert Benzon, the NTSB investigator-in-charge.
Keeping in mind that until the Nov. 12, 2001, crash of Flight 587, most transport pilots were unaware that rapid rudder reversals could cause the tail to rip off the aircraft, the safety board zeroed in on why and how this crucial information, familiar to flight test engineers and manufacturers, is not included in pilot upset training programs.
Edward States was captain of Flight 587 and First Officer Sten Molin was at the controls when the A300-600R, N14053, Serial No. 420, departed New York JFK International Airport at 9:14:35 a.m. en route to Santo Domingo. The aircraft twice encountered wake vortices of Japan Airlines Flight 47, a Boeing 747-400 that had departed about 1 min. 45 sec. earlier from the same runway.
DIGITAL FLIGHT DATA Recorder and Cockpit Voice Recorder (DFDR and CVR) data (see pp. 50, 51) shows the A300-600R encountered the first wake vortex at 9:15:36 a.m., the second at 9:15:51 a.m. In the last 8 sec. of FDR data, the A300-600R experienced three lateral movements, two to the right at 0.3g, and 0.4g and one to the left at 0.4g, which were consistent with rudder movements.
Shortly after the second occurred, Molin called for "max power"but why, if airspeed was only about 10 kt. below target of 250 kt. (see p. 50)?John Cox, Air Line Pilots Assn. executive air safety chairman, suggested the first officer, reacting perhaps to a sluggish feel to the aircraft, might have wanted to reduce the number of variables he was dealing with and increase power from climb to max. continuous.
At about 9:15:59 a.m., the vertical tail fin departed the aircraft and the A300-600R crashed into the Belle Harbor, N.Y., residential community, killing 260 onboard and five people on the ground.
Immediate actions were taken, with the FAA issuing an emergency AD 2002-23-51 that called for visual inspection of the composite tail structure. In addition, Airbus reviewed service histories of A300 and A310 aircraft that had encountered inflight upsets that resulted in heavy lateral loads that might have compromised structural integrity of the aircraft.
They found three A300-600 cases where limit load was exceeded, including one where ultimate load was exceeded, probably several times--the FDR failed for part of the sequence. This was American Airlines Flight 903, an A300B4-605R (N90070) the most striking in similarity to the high lateral loads on Flight 587. On May 12, 1997, the aircraft experienced several rudder "doublets" or reversals.
The A310 had the same record--three cases where limit load was exceeded, including one that exceeded ultimate load. This was an Interflug flight in 1991 that lost control during a go-around, with speeds ranging from 50-300 kt. and pitch attitudes up to 80 deg. during the event, caused by mistrim from a pilot-autopilot fight (AW&ST Jan. 30, 1995, p. 57). All aircraft were inspected and only the Flight 903 tail showed damage.
But the most stunning of all actions in the wake of the Nov. 12 accident was NTSB's interim recommendations, A-02-01/-02, on Feb. 8, which said transport pilots must be made aware that sudden rudder movements could jeopardize structural integrity of the aircraft. Most pilots had never heard of this possibility (AW&ST Feb. 18, p. 44 and Jan. 21, p. 24).
Upon discovering this information, an American Airlines Boeing 737 captain, John F. Lavelle, reported to the airline that he had observed Molin, whom he described as a "perfectionist" with excellent skills, applying excessive rudder input on several 727 flights they operated in 1997.
On one occasion, during initial climb in a 727 at Flaps 5 and 1,000-1,500 ft., the aircraft crossed a mild wake and Molin stroked the rudder pedals "1-2-3, about that fast," to nearly full deflection while using little or no aileron. Lavelle thought they had lost an engine and asked Molin what he was doing. Molin said his action was "per the American Airlines Advanced Aircraft Maneuvering Program," which he claimed directed him to use rudder.
Lavelle said the rudder pulses didn't level the wings and just caused yaw motions with heavy side loads, and the wake only required a little aileron. Molin insisted the AAMP directed the use of rudder in this manner, but Lavelle said that was for lower speeds.

AA Flight 587 disaster with tail (vertical stabilizer and rudder) conditions existed before FLT 586 disaster:

Perilous Parallel in 1997 Flight (to AA587)

By Sylvia Adcock
STAFF WRITER
Washington - It almost happened once before.
October 30, 2002
Airplanes aren't supposed to lose their tails, but in 1997, another Airbus 300-600 came within a hair's breadth of suffering the same fate as American Flight 587, the plane that crashed into Belle Harbor after its tail came off.
In May 1997, American Flight 903 was approaching Miami for a landing when the plane nearly stalled. As the pilot attempted to recover, he moved the rudder back and forth several times as far as it would go. Calculations done since the Flight 587 accident show the action put loads - or forces - on the tail that were greater than it was designed to take.
The maneuvers injured a passenger and a flight attendant, and the National Transportation Safety Board was called in to investigate. But the issues that surround Flight 587 - the strength of the Airbus' tail and how pilots use the rudder - didn't capture the attention of airlines or pilots.
Airbus did submit a statement to the NTSB after the Miami incident saying that "rudder reversals can lead to structural loads that exceed the design of the fin." But that information never became common knowledge in the pilot community. It wasn't until after the Flight 587 accident, when the forces on the tail did rip it off, that the NTSB issued recommendations that pilots be warned about incorrect rudder use.

More: www.iasa.com.au/folders/Safety_Issues/others/perilousparallel.html

Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.