Cheyenne R. Ubiera
An EgyptAir flight that crashed en route to
Cairo, killing all 66 people on board, was brought down by a pilot who had a
cigarette in the cockpit and started a fire, a new report found.
EgyptAir flight MS804 was
traveling on May 19, 2016, from Paris Charles de Gaulle Airport to Cairo
International Airport when it fell out of the sky between the Greek island of
Crete and northern Egypt.
France’s Bureau of Enquiry and Analysis for Civil Aviation Safety (BEA) has since concluded that pilot Mohamed Said Shoukair’s mid-air smoke break led to a fire onboard the Airbus A320 jet when his cigarette ignited oxygen leaking from an oxygen mask in the cockpit.
Egyptian authorities initially
said that the plane crash was the result of a terrorist attack, claiming that
traces of explosives had been found on the bodies of the victims, but those
allegations were widely discredited.
In 2018, France’s BEA determined that the flight went down because of a fire onboard based on analysis of data from the aircraft’s black box recorder, which was recovered from deep water near Greece by the US Navy — though at the time investigators did not say what specifically caused the onboard inferno.
But in March 2022, BEA released a new report that alleges that oxygen had leaked from a pilot’s oxygen mask in the cockpit shortly before the crash, based on black box data that captured the sound of the oxygen hissing.
The oxygen mask in question
had been replaced just three days before the fateful flight by an EgyptAir
maintenance worker, but for an unknown reason it had its release valve set to
the “emergency position,” which, according to the Airbus safety manual, could
lead to leaks.
Incredibly, at the time of the
incident, EgyptAir pilots were allowed to smoke in the cockpit – a rule that
has since changed. The onboard smoking, combined with the leaking oxygen, had
set the stage for the fire, according to French aviation experts.
The deadly plane crash is currently the subject of a manslaughter case before the Paris Court of Appeals.
The 134-page report, which
was reviewed by the Italian newspaper Corriere della Serra, was released
to the Parisian court at the request of local judges.
Egypt has refused to release
its own report into the crash and in 2018 rejected BEA’s initial findings,
dismissing them as “unfounded.”
Families of victims have accused the Egyptian authorities of failing to cooperate with the investigation into the crash.
Antoine Lachenaud, a lawyer
representing the family of Clement Daeschner-Cormary, a 26-year-old passenger
who died, said the new report showed that the crash was caused by human
error.
“When warnings are ignored in
a systematic manner this results in a crash and it becomes impossible to
maintain that this is due to chance,” he said.
Cheyenne R. Ubiera,
The Sun, via New
York Post, April 27, 2022 – 2:38am
Le crash du vol Paris-Le Caire d'Egyptair aurait été provoqué par la cigarette d'un des pilotes
ResponderExcluirAlém do cigarro proibido, a manutenção da máscara de oxigênio mal feita tambem poderia causar mortes por seu vazamento aniquilando os pilotos em caso de despressurização. Como sempre culpa-se o ero primário.
ResponderExcluir