The crash of the Paris-Cairo flight of Egyptair was caused by the cigarette of one of the pilots

by time news

According to a report released by the Italian newspaper Corriere della Serathe accident that killed 66 people on May 19, 2016 was due to the leaking of an oxygen mask, coupled with the fact that one of the pilots was smoking in the cockpit.

The crash of the EgyptAir plane in the Mediterranean in 2016, which killed 66 people, was due to a fire in the cockpit, according to the conclusions of French experts revealed on Wednesday April 27 by the Italian daily Corriere della Sera .

Flight MS804, connecting Paris to Cairo, crashed in the Mediterranean Sea on May 19, 2016 between Crete and the northern coast of Egypt, after suddenly disappearing from radar screens. The 66 people on board, including 40 Egyptians and 15 French, had perished. While Cairo very quickly put forward the trail of an attack, Paris favors from the start the thesis of a technical incident.

According to the 134-page document consulted by The Corriere della Sera and transmitted to the Paris Court of Appeal in March, a fire on board was caused by the conjunction of two factors: a leak from the co-pilot’s oxygen mask and the combustion of a cigarette smoked by the pilot or the co-pilot.

The black box sound recordings support this hypothesis, according to the Italian newspaper. The experts have in particular isolated two “rustlescoming from the microphone incorporated into the co-pilot’s mask, a few minutes before the accident, probably indicating a strong flow of air, the mask having been put on the “emergency“. The fire itself was started by “a spark or a flame» probably due to a cigarette.

«Tired of this nocturnal flight»

In June 2018, two experts requested by the investigating judges seized of the file in Paris had pointed out the replacement, three days before the crash, of the box containing the oxygen mask of the co-pilot, for unknown reasons. “The replacement of this equipment requires very careful verification (…), oxygen leaks being particularly dangerous“, they had underlined.

And in a report published in July 2018, the French Civil Aviation Safety Investigation Bureau (BEA) claimed that its “preferred hypothesis” was “that a fire broke out in the cockpit (…), a fire which developed rapidly and led to the loss of control of the aircraft».

The document revealed by The Corriere della Serain support of the recordings, also reveals that the two pilots said to themselves “tired from this nocturnal flight and the lack of sleep“. However, the information available to legal experts suggests that “rest hours were respected».


SEE ALSO – Were traces of explosives found on the Paris-Cairo flight?

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