Sources within the Egyptian Investigation Committee said late on Tuesday that the EgyptAir jet that disappeared last week did not show technical problems before taking off from Paris.
The sources said the plane did not make contact with Egyptian air traffic control, but Egyptian air traffic controllers were able to see it on radar on a border area between Egyptian and Greek airspace.
He said the border area was known as KUMBI, 260 nautical miles from Cairo.
The sources said on condition of anonymity that the plane disappeared without swerving off radar screens after less than a minute of it entering Egyptian airspace.
The sources said air traffic controllers from Greece and Egypt had given differing accounts of the plane’s final moments.
“A report said the plane had shown no technical problems before taking off, citing an Aircraft Technical Log signed by its pilot before takeoff.
“The paper said EgyptAir flight 804 transmitted 11 “electronic messages” starting at 2109 GMT on May 18, about 3 1/2 hours before disappearing from radar screens with 66 passengers and crew on board,’’ he said.
The report said the first two messages indicated the engines were functional.
It said the third message came at 0026 GMT on May 19 and showed a rise in the temperature of the co-pilot’s window.
The report said the plane kept transmitting messages for the next three minutes before vanishing.
Meanwhile, Hisham Abdelhamid, Head of Egypt’s Forensics Authority, has dismissed as premature a suggestion that the small size of the body parts retrieved since the Airbus 320 jet crashed indicated there had been an explosion on board.
“The assessment is mere assumption; it is too early to draw conclusions,” Abdelhamid said.
He said investigators were looking for clues in the human remains and debris recovered from the Mediterranean Sea.
He said the plane and its black box recorders, which could explain what brought down the Paris-to-Cairo flight as it entered Egyptian air space, had not been located.
An Egyptian forensics official said on condition of anonymity that the 23 bags of body parts had been collected, the largest no bigger than the palm of a hand.
He said their size pointed to an explosion, although no trace of explosives had been detected.
At least two other sources with direct knowledge of the investigation also said it would be premature to say what caused the plane to plunge into the sea.
“All we know is it disappeared suddenly without making a distress call,” one of them said.
“Only by analysing the black boxes or a large amount of debris could authorities begin to form a clearer picture,’’ they said.
Egypt official disclosed that government had deployed a robot submarine and France has sent a search ship to help hunt for the black boxes.
He said it was not clear whether either of them can detect signals emitted by the flight recorders, lying in waters possibly 3,000 metres (10,000 feet) deep.
The official said the signal emitters had a battery life of 30 days.
He, however, said five days after the plane vanished from radar screens, air traffic controllers from Greece and Egypt were still giving differing accounts of its last moments.
Although government officials have acknowledged the need for international assistance, the U.S. Navy said Egypt had not formally requested American support beyond a P-3 Orion surveillance aircraft, which was deployed on Thursday.
Meanwhile, the relatives of the victims were giving DNA samples at a hotel near Cairo airport on Tuesday to help identify the body parts, their grief mixed with frustration.
Amjad Haqi, an Iraqi man whose mother Najla was flying back from medical treatment in France, said the families were being kept in the dark and had not been formally told that any body parts had been recovered.
He said all the officials were concerned about was to find the black box and the debris of the plane.
“That’s their problem, not mine.
“And then they come and talk to us about insurance and compensation. I don’t care about compensation, all I care about is to find my mother and bury her,’’ he said. (Reuters/NAN)