Russian aviation official says inspection of wreckage in Egypt shows plane broke apart but this does not necessarily indicate bomb

A Russian airliner that crashed in Egypt, killing all 224 people on board, broke up in the air, a Russian aviation official has said.

Viktor Sorochenko, an official with the Intergovernmental Aviation Committee, speaking after inspecting the crash site on the Sinai peninsula, said it was too early to talk about conclusions from the crash, Russian news agencies reported.

A militant group affiliated to Islamic State in Egypt claimed responsibility for bringing down the Kogalymavia Airbus A321 on Saturday “in response to Russian airstrikes that killed hundreds of Muslims on Syrian land”. However, the Egyptian prime minister disputed the claim, suggesting militants in northern Sinai, where the country is fighting an Islamic insurgency, did not have the weaponry to hit a flight at 9,000 metres (31,000ft). The Russian transport minister also expressed scepticism about the militants’ claim.

Russia, an ally of Syria’s president, Bashar al-Assad, launched airstrikes against opposition groups in Syria, including Isis, on 30 September. The fact that the airliner broke up in the air does not necessarily indicate a bomb was the cause.

Russia’s emergencies ministry has sent more than 100 workers to Egypt to help recover bodies and examine evidence. Staff from the French accident investigation agency, BEA, were also on assigned to the task because the Airbus A321-200 was designed in France.

The agency said its team would be joined by two investigators from its German counterpart, the BFU, because the aircraft was manufactured in Germany, and four from its Russian counterpart, the MAK, because the plane was operated by a Russian company. They will join emergency services and aviation specialists already at the crash site, which is spread over more than 5.8 sq miles.

At least 163 bodies have been recovered and transported to various hospitals and morgues, including the Zeinhom morgue in Cairo, according to a cabinet statement. With the exception of four Ukrainians and one person from Belarus, all of the victims were Russian.

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Russia’s emergencies minister, Vladimir Puchkov, said in a televised statement that 120 bodies had been examined and were being prepared to be flown home. They were expected to begin arriving in St Petersburg late on Sunday or early on Monday.

Russia’s transport safety watchdog, Rostransnadzor, said it had ordered the Kogalymavia airline, which is also known as Metrojet, to ground its fleet of Airbus A321s until the cause of the disaster was established, according to the Russian news agency Interfax.

But an official from Kogalymavia said it would take its Airbus A321 planes out of active use one by one for safety checks. Oksana Golovina at THC Holding, which owns Kogalymavia, told Reuters that its flight schedule would not be affected and that the airline was discussing the timing of the safety checks with Russian transport authorities.

An Egyptian ground service official who examined the plane before takeoff said it appeared to be in good condition. “Everything checked out in 35 minutes,” he told the Associated Press.

A Russian TV channel, however, quoted Natalya Trukhacheva, identified as the wife of co-pilot Sergei Trukhachev, as saying he had complained before the flight “that the technical condition of the aircraft left much to be desired”.

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Local media reported that the A321 had flown 16 times in the week before the tragedy and had suffered one previous accident, when the tail struck the runway on landing in Cairo in 2001, after which it underwent extensive repairs.

It was built in 1997, reportedly making it one of the oldest A321s in service anywhere, and had previously been operated by Libyan company Middle East Airlines, Turkish company Onur Air, Saudi Arabian Airlines and Syrian company Cham Wings Airlines. It had flown 56,000 hours in nearly 21,000 flights.

Kogalymavia failed a safety inspection in 2014 but reportedly rectified the violations and its planes had not been involved in large crashes before. A Kogalymavia Tu-154 caught fire on the runway in Surgut on 1 January 2011, however, killing three people and injuring 44.

The aircraft took off at 5.51am Cairo time (0351 GMT) and disappeared from radar screens 23 minutes later, Egypt’s civil aviation ministry said in a statement.



According to FlightRadar24, an authoritative flight tracking service based in Sweden, it descended rapidly at about 1,800 metres a minute.

The Airbus A321 is a medium-haul jet that has been in service since 1994. There are more than 1,100 in operation worldwide and it has a good safety record.