Egyptian charter plane crashes with French tourists aboard

[cerulean]

http://edition.cnn.com/2004/WORLD/me....ap/index.html

CAIRO, Egypt (AP) -- A charter airliner with 135 people aboard -- most of them French tourists -- crashed shortly after takeoff early Saturday from the Red Sea resort of Sharm el-Sheikh, airport officials in Cairo say.

This is a sad story. There's a good chance that it was just a matter of third-world maintenance standards and/or poor weather. But given that Egypt protested mightily when it became clear that an EgyptAir pilot had done a suicide crash of a passenger jet (remember that incident near New York), so I don't think we can count on an objective determination of whether this was terrorism or human error.

[cerulean]

Perhaps it is just coincidence, but Tony Blair and his family are on holiday in the Sharm el-Sheikh area.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/3364795.stm

[Justcurious]

Egyptian planes have had accidents before. Their track record is not all that good.

"The last major crash involving an Egyptian plane took place in May 2002, when a Boeing 767 of the state airline EgyptAir crashed near Tunis airport, killing 15 people.

In October 1999, an EgyptAir Boeing 767 dived into the sea off Nantucket, Massachusetts, in the USA killing all 217 people on board."

http://english.aljazeera.net/NR/exer...686EDEB238.htm

[cerulean]

Yes, the October 1999 incident involved an Egyptian pilot who just happened to decide to commit suicide and bring his passengers along for the ride. So you can't call that an accident. I can't say whether it was terrorism or not, but he did also kill a number of senior Egyptian military officers.

I don't know if the May 2002 incident involved suicide or poor maintenance.

[LoveIsrael23]

Lets just hope there werent any jews on the flight.

Serves them right, if it was an EL AL plane they would be handing out lollies in every muslims capital from TRIPOLI, to JAKARTA.

[Justcurious]

I have great doubts about these Arab airlines. I had the worst ever touch-down in Tunisia several years ago, when our Air Liberté plane landed at the Monastir airport. The plane came down like a stone. Nobody was hurt, fortunately, and the plane was able to continue.

The same company had this accident in Finland at about the same time: http://aviation-safety.net/database/1994/941103-1.htm

[danholo]

The fact that there were no distress calls arouses suspicion but it's useless jumping to conclusions.

[Kev]

Funny how quickly we forget some of these storys.

Didnt the man yell out Praise Allah before going down, or some such phrase, or was this speculation at the time?


Hmm, I had forgotten all about that "accident" as well! ;-(

Originally posted by cerulean
Yes, the October 1999 incident involved an Egyptian pilot who just happened to decide to commit suicide and bring his passengers along for the ride. So you can't call that an accident. I can't say whether it was terrorism or not, but he did also kill a number of senior Egyptian military officers.

I don't know if the May 2002 incident involved suicide or poor maintenance.

[minusthejihad]

No offense,

But if the quality level of Arab airliners matches their country's quality level of education, economy, or even construction, probability says they should be coming down pretty often. No big surprise there.

On top of that, you have all these suicidal freaks who make it all the way through flight school and that doubles your chances.

[cerulean]

Here's an article about that intentional October 1999 crash. The pilot repeatedly said "Tawkkalt ala Allah ... [which] essentially means "I rely on God." at least six times as he was forcing the plane down.

http://www.honestreporting.com/artic...ic_Monthly.asp

[cerulean]

The Egyptian government has already decided this was a technical failure, even though there is no way they could have made this determination yet.

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/01/04/in...st/04PLAN.html

[L@mplighterM]

This is just from memory and I don’t mean from my hard drive:

I seem to recall that the guy that took the plane down was the co-pilot. The pilot had left the cockpit and that’s when the co-pilot decided to crash the plane.

The Arab world stated the phrase “Tawkkalt ala Allah” wasn’t an indication that he intentionally crashed the plane because the phrase could have different meanings.

I believe that it was the US that conducted the investigation of that flight and concluded that the pilot downed it. Egypt did not agree with the findings!

The Egyptians will be conducting their own investigation in this crash and there’s no way that the truth will ever be told.

[cerulean]

Right, it was the co-pilot who brought the October 1999 plane down. The actual pilot started working against him at the controls when he saw what was happening.

[ibrodsky]

Originally posted by Kev
Funny how quickly we forget some of these storys.

Didnt the man yell out Praise Allah before going down, or some such phrase, or was this speculation at the time?


Hmm, I had forgotten all about that "accident" as well! ;-(

He kept muttering, very calmly, something roughly equivalent to "Trust in Allah." I believe the captain went to the restroom but when he noticed the plane was in a dive rushed back to the cockpit and screamed "What is going on here!"

I too find the initial reports about this crash suggest a thorough investigation is warranted. Surely if there was an engine problem the pilot would have said something over the radio. Otherwise, what are the options? A collision, violent weather (not mentioned), a bomb, or another one of those Death Cult events...

The fact that most of the passengers were French could be a clue. I wonder what percentage were non-Muslims.

[L@mplighterM]

I read that the Lebanese plane that crashed the other day might be the one that was stolen in Africa last year. Strange!


Apparently Egypt sends/flies all the Boeing planes to Norway for maintenance