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Mystery surrounding the crash of EgyptAir MS804 has deepened following claims its pilot DID make a distress call – about an emergency descent aimed at putting out a fire.

It was initially reported that Mohamed Said Shoukair, 37, lost all radio contact before the Airbus A320 plunged into the Mediterranean on Thursday en route from Paris to Cairo, with the loss of 66 lives.

But according to aviation sources in France, the Egyptian pilot contacted air-traffic control about smoke which he said was filling the plane and told them he was going to make an emergency descent.

There was “conversation several minutes long” between Captain Shoukair and the controllers, which amounted to a distress call, according to the source.

Read more:Submarine hunt for black box

French TV channel M6 reported that the pilot then initiated a “rapid descent” aimed at putting out the fire on board and clearing the smoke.

(Image: Andrew Parsons / i-Images)

The manoeuvre involves dramatic changes in cabin air pressure and can be extremely dangerous – but the latest claims about the flight’s last moments do fit in with earlier information.

According to Greece’s Defence Minister Pano Kammenos, the plane dropped sharply from 37,000ft to 15,000ft and then made “sudden swerves”. As it entered Egyptian airspace, over the Greek island of Karpathos, it first made a sharp, 90-degree turn to the east, and then carried out a full circular loop.

A leaked data report also suggests that a fire blazed across the flight-deck minutes before the disaster – suggesting a ­catastrophic electronics malfunction.

Just after the flight disappeared, the airline said there had been a distress call. This was later denied by the Egyptian military and withdrawn by EgyptAir.

The new information made a terror attack seem “less likely” – although it has still not been ruled out.

(Image: REUTERS/Christian Hartmann)

On Friday, authorities released an audio recording of Captain Shoukair’s words to Swiss air-traffic control, from around an hour into the planned four-hour flight.

The communication occurred around midnight local Swiss time, about two-and-a-half hours before Greek air-traffic controllers in Athens lost contact.

The pilot was in good spirits and thanked the controller in Greek, according to the Greek civil aviation authority. But transmissions from the aircraft in the minutes before it was lost reveal that smoke was detected underneath the cockpit and in a toilet. These messages were sent to ground computers before the airliner plunged from the sky.

The hunt is now on for the plane’s black boxes – the flight data and cockpit voice recorders that could unlock the mystery. French Foreign Minister Jean-Marc Ayrault insisted “all theories are being examined and none is favoured”.

(Image: Getty Images) (Image: REUTERS/Mohamed Abd El Ghany)

But Simon Hradecky, editor of the respected website Aviation Herald, said available data suggested an electrical fault on the aircraft was now more likely than a terrorist attack.

Details of Flight MS804’s final moments emerged as human remains and personal belongings from some of the victims were recovered by search vessels.

Debris was found 180 miles north of the port of Alexandria by the Egyptian navy. The spot is south of where the Airbus vanished from radar signals.

(Image: Egyptian Military/Handout via Reuters)

Services were held for the 66 dead passengers and crew this weekend, as the name of the youngest victim emerged.

Joumana Bettiche, just four months old, and brother Mohammed, three, perished alongside parents Faycal Bettiche and his wife Nouha Saoudi, all of Angers, France.

Analysis by Jane's Aviation and Terrorism Expert Bruce Jones

MS804 Airbus A320 is a “fly-by-wire” aircraft, which means the pilots’ flight controls are run electronically.

A fire in the avionics sections would have caused the system to go “very bad” and make it unresponsive.

There are conflicting reports over whether the crew were in radio contact before the tragedy. But it does seem they may have been trying to deal with a fire or other on-board emergency that could have damaged the controls.

The last similar major incident was Swissair Flight 111 from JFK en route to Geneva in 1998. A fire led to electrical failure which left the pilots “flying blind” and losing control of the plane.

It crashed into the Atlantic off Nova Scotia, Canada, killing 229 people. Like MS804, the airliner remained at high altitude for several minutes on radar, but with interrupted communications. Both flights ended with drastic, erratic manoeuvres and loss of the aircraft.