Metrojet Flight 9268

 Metrojet Flight 9268 (Deep event,  Plane crash)

File:Airbus A321-231 MetroJet EI-ETJ.JPG Airbus A321 EI-ETJ Flight 7K9268 in its most recent livery.
Location	South of Al-Arish,  Sinai Peninsula,  Egypt
Coordinates	30.1506°N 34.178°E / 30.1506; 34.178 Fatal error: The format of the coordinate could not be determined. Parsing failed.
Deaths	224"[1]" can not be assigned to a declared number type with value 224.
Survivors	none"none" is not a number.
Interest of	Julian Bray
Description	Just like the CIA-sponsored bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 four days before Christmas 1988, Metrojet Flight 7K9268 disappeared from radar at 31000 feet, broke up and crashed killing everyone on board. Spooky or what at Halloween 2015?

Kogalymavia Flight 9268 (KGL 9268/7K9268) operated by Russian airline Kogalymavia (also known as Kolavia and Metrojet) crashed in central Sinai 23 minutes after its departure from Sharm el-Sheikh International Airport on Saturday 31 October 2015 at 4:13 GMT (7:13 Moscow time).

The aircraft, an Airbus A321, was carrying 217 passengers and seven crew members. All 224 people on board, mostly tourists from Russia returning to St Petersburg, were killed.

Russian President Vladimir Putin declared Sunday 1 November 2015 to be a national day of mourning.

British Prime Minister David Cameron called President Putin to say how sorry he was about this terrible tragedy and that Britain shared the pain and grief of the Russian people. US Secretary of State John Kerry spoke to his Russian counterpart Sergey Lavrov and conveyed sympathies from the entire American people. Asked whether US President Barack Obama had personally offered his condolences Putin's spokesman, Dmitry Peskov, told reporters:

"Perhaps this should be explained not by the Kremlin. For us the main thing now is the work to assist families who lost their loved ones in the plane crash, and we are focusing on this."

Aircraft

The Airbus A321 was owned and leased from Dublin-based AerCap and was 18 years old at the time of the incident. The aircraft was initally purchased by Vietnam Airlines but, never taken up, it was delivered to Lebanon's Middle East Airlines in May 1997. It was transferred to Kolavia in March 2012 and then to Metrojet in May. The aircaft was powered by two IAE V2533 engines and configured to carry 220 passengers in an economy configuration.

Crash

Wreckage of the Russian Airbus Metrojet Flight 9268

Kolavia/Metrojet A321 EI-ETJ Flight 7K9268 left Sharm El Sheik airport at 06:51 for Pulkovo Airport in St Petersburg, Russia with 217 passengers, including 17 children, and seven crew members on board. All those aboard were Russians, according to the Russian embassy. The aircraft failed to make contact with Cyprus Air Traffic Control 23 minutes later. Russia's Federal Air Transport Agency confirmed the flight disappeared from radar. Initially, the head of Egypt's civil aviation accident body, Ayman al-Muqaddam, said: "The...Russian airline had told us that the Russian plane we lost contact with is safe and that it has contacted Turkish air traffic control and is passing through Turkish skies now." Flightradar24 also posted on Twitter: "It's NOT confirmed that this flight has crashed. It descended 5000 feet before Flightradar24 coverage was lost."

The captain of the flight reportedly told ATC that there was a technical fault and had requested a route change, although there was no indication whether a change had occurred. The Egyptian Civilian Aviation Ministry issued a statement that indicated the fight was at an altitude of 31,000 feet when it disappeared from radar screens after a reported "steep descent" up to 5,000 feet. It had disappeared in a mountainous area in central Sinai with poor weather conditions making it difficult for rescue crews to get to the scene. An unnamed security source said that any survivors and the bodies of those who died would be flown to Cairo. The descent of 5,000 feet occurred in one minute shortly before it disappeared. Reuters quoted an unnamed security officer as saying that the aircraft has been completely destroyed and most passengers were likely to have died. Flightradar24 shows the aircraft climbing to 33,500 feet before suddenly descending to 28,375 feet approximately 50 kilometres north east of Nekhel on the Sinai Peninsula, after which its position was no longer tracked. Unnamed Egyptian authorities indicated that the first parts of the wreckage had been located. Fifty ambulances were sent to the crash site. Unnamed Egyptian officials reported that the plane "split in two" and most bodies were found strapped to their seats. However, they reported that voices of trapped passengers could be heard in a section of the crashed plane.

Eurocontrol's Air Flow Traffic Management (CFMU) issued a note to all operators along the route shortly after the aircraft's disappearance that due to technical problems all flights would be tactically re-routed, although the notice was redacted shortly thereafter.

Investigation

Ayman al-Muqaddam, who was appointed to investigate the cause of the crash, said that the pilot had made contact with the civil aviation authorities and asked to land at the nearest airport. He suggested the plane may have been attempting an emergency landing at Al-Arish’s airport in north Sinai. It crashed 35 kilometres south of the coastal city. Though the Sinai insurgency has been ongoing for a number of years, there were no reports the plane had been shot down, according to Egyptian security sources.

A security source has told the Deutsche Presse-Agentur (DPA) that the black box of the Russian plane has been found. He added that from the primary examination of the wreckage and tail of the plane, there are no indications that the plane suffered a terrorist operation and at this stage the crash is thought to be caused by a technical error. "There are no survivors among its passengers," the source told DPA.

French air accident investigators are also travelling to Egypt to join the investigation into the crash. France's BEA accident investigation agency is involved because the Airbus A321 jet was designed in France. A BEA official said the team, including two BEA investigators and six technical advisers from Airbus, was arriving Sunday. The BEA said the team would be joined by two investigators from its German counterpart BFU, because the plane was manufactured in Germany, and four investigators from its Russian counterpart MAK, because the plane was operated by a Russian company.

Reactions

Egyptian Prime Minister Sherif Ismail confirmed the aircraft has crashed and cancelled his meetings upon hearing the news. He was on his way to the crash site along with other ministers on a private jet, according to the Tourism Ministry.

Airbus issued the following announcement:

Airbus regrets to confirm that an A321-200 operated by Metrojet was involved in an accident shortly after 6:17 local time (04:17 GMT) over the Sinai Peninsula today. The aircraft was operating a scheduled service, Flight 7K9268 from Sharm el Sheikh (Egypt) to St Petersburg (Russia).

The concerns and sympathy of the Airbus employees go to all those affected by this tragic accident of Flight 7K-9268.

The aircraft involved in the accident, registered under EI-ETJ was MSN (Manufacturer Serial Number) 663, was produced in 1997 and since 2012 operated by Metrojet. The aircraft had accumulated some 56,000 flight hours in nearly 21,000 flights. It was powered by IAE-V2500 engines. At this time no further factual information is available.

In line with ICAO annex 13, an Airbus go-team of technical advisors stands-by ready to provide full technical assistance to French Investigation Agency – BEA – and to the Authorities in charge of the investigation.

President Vladimir Putin has ordered the emergency ministry to despatch rescue teams to Egypt, where the Russian passenger plane with 224 on board crashed on Saturday:

“The head of state has given orders to send emergency ministry teams to Egypt immediately to work at the plane crash site,” a Kremlin statement said. Putin also ordered the government to launch a special commission “due to the catastrophe of Kogalymavia company plane in Egypt,” the statement said.

An emergency ministry meeting shown on Russian television announced that teams of rescue workers along with the emergency minister, Vladimir Puchkov, will fly out to Egypt at 1300 GMT. Russia’s transport minister Maksim Sokolov and the head of Russia’s air transport agency Alexander Neradko are also leaving for the site, Russian agencies quoted the ministry’s representative as saying.

Russia’s Investigative Committee said it had launched a criminal probe into any possible violation of air safety rules, a standard procedure when air crashes involving Russian planes occur. It is also sending investigators to the scene.

Russia’s air transport agency Rosaviatsia said that the plane, an Airbus 321, was carrying 217 passengers and seven crew when it disappeared from the radar after taking off for St Petersburg from the Red Sea resort city of Sharm el-Sheikh.

Islamic State claims responsibility

Shortly after the crash, Islamic State (IS) militants claimed responsibility for the incident which took place in an area of fighting between Egyptian government forces and an IS affiliate, Sinai Province. However, Egyptian security sources said there was no indication that the aircraft had been shot down or blown up. Islamic State said this was in revenge for Russian air strikes against militants in Syria, where ISIS controls territories that straddle Iraq. Some experts said Islamic State militants in Sinai do not have surface-to-air missiles capable of hitting an aircraft at high altitude, though they could not exclude the possibility of a bomb on board the flight. Militants in the north who pledged allegiance to the jihadist Islamic State group have killed hundreds of soldiers and policemen since the army ousted Islamist president Mohamed Morsi in 2013. Russia's Transport Minister, Maxim Sokolov, summarily dismissed the Islamic State claims as 'fabrications', citing a lack of evidence to support them from Egyptian authorities and Air Traffic data.

Not an accident

On 1 November 2015, the website Crimes of Empire claimed that the Metrojet disaster "was no accident":

It has become clear that someone has targeted the MetroJet Flight 7K9268 that was destroyed in Egypt yesterday leaving all 217 passengers and 7 crew aboard dead. This statement can be made at this early stage in the investigation because it has become clear that the jet downed in Egypt has split into at least two pieces and there is really no way that the flight breaking up in the air is consistent with an accident.

A single story printed in a pro-Western news organ, the Daily Star, makes it clear that someone has done this:

Egyptian rescue teams were looking Sunday for more victims of a Russian passenger plane crash in Sinai, widening the search after finding bodies scattered across eight square kilometres a day after the incident.

Mechanical failure will cause the plane to be unable to fly, it will not cause the distribution of the wreckage over a large area as we are seeing in Sinai. Once it is accepted that this was not an accident but an intended attack, then the obvious motive becomes clear. Either someone is upset over the month-long Russian operation in Syria and they are expressing their displeasure, or someone is trying to frame someone for that..

It is quite unlikely that any ground anti-aircraft system was responsible for the destruction of Metrojet 7K9268, the height of the jet and the topography of the Sinai would make it seemingly impossible to hide a system of the required size in that area. The prime methods would be appear to be either a remote hijacking, a bomb or an attack from a jet. At this early stage the remote hijacking seems to be a non-starter as it fails to explain the mid-air destruction of the fuselage. The most likely explanation seems to be either a bomb on board, an air-to-air attack or something exotic.

More likely a bomb

Michael Clarke: "much more likely to have been a bomb on board" the Russian Airbus

Professor Michael Clarke, Director of the Royal United Services Institute, was reported on 1 November 2015 to have said that early indications suggest the Russian Airbus may have been destroyed by a bomb on board:

"Early reports said it split into two and that suggests a catastrophic failure, not a mechanical failure, but perhaps an explosion on board, so I would be much more inclined to think, if we have to guess at this stage, it is much more likely to have been a bomb on board than a missile fired from the ground.

"And there’s no sign of a distress call, so the idea that the aircraft was undergoing a mechanical problem, or an engine problem, or a fire, or something like that, you would expect that there would be some sort of distress call beforehand.

"So the fact that there was a catastrophic failure at 31,000 feet, with the aircraft falling in two pieces, suggests to me an explosion on board. So was this caused by some form of terrible accident, which is unlikely, or a bomb, which is much more likely? My mind is moving in that direction rather than anything that happened on the ground."

"Lockerbie theory"

Julian Bray's “Lockerbie theory” on the Russian Airbus

On 4 November 2015, the Daily Mirror reported that aviation security expert Julian Bray's “Lockerbie theory” is now thought to be the most likely explanation for the Metrojet disaster. Bray believes a bomb was hidden in luggage, the same way terrorists brought down Pan Am Flight 103 over Scotland in 1988. He said:

“I think it was an explosive device on board, something that was loaded into the luggage. If it was an incendiary device and it went off, it might have burst through part of the computer system. That could account for erratic movements in the air before Metrojet 9268 finally crashed.”

Another theory is that a bomb may have been hidden in a food trolley delivered to the rear galley:

“A driver and employees who brought meals for the passengers of flight 9268 in the morning on October 31 are being interrogated,” a spokesman for Misr Petroleum, one of Egypt’s largest oil corporations, told Russian news agency TASS.

According to US intelligence officials who spoke with CNN, the latest intelligence suggests that the crash was most likely caused by a bomb planted on the plane by ISIS or an affiliate. The officials stressed that no formal conclusion has been reached by the US intelligence community and that officials haven't seen forensic evidence from the crash investigation.

Intelligence also suggests someone at the Sharm el-Sheikh airport helped get a bomb onto the plane, one US official said:

"This airport has lax security. It is known for that," the official said. "But there is intelligence suggesting an assist from someone at the airport."

The signs pointing to ISIS, another US official said, are partially based on monitoring of internal messages of the terrorist group. Those messages are separate from public ISIS claims of responsibility, that official said. In an audio message from the ISIS affiliate Sinai Province that was posted on terror-related social media accounts on 4 November 2015, the organisation adamantly insisted that it brought down the flight.

"Find your black boxes and analyse them, give us the results of your investigation and the depth of your expertise and prove we didn't do it or how it was downed," the message said. "Die with your rage. We are the ones with God's blessing who brought it down. And God willing, one day we will reveal how, at the time we desire."

Typically, ISIS is quick to trumpet how and who carried out any attacks for purposes of praise and propaganda. To some, the fact that ISIS hasn't provided details in this case raises doubt about the group's repeated claims of responsibility. Officials in Egypt and Russia have said there's no evidence to support their claims:

"That was a very baffling way to claim credit for what would be the most significant terrorist attack since 9/11," CNN terrorism analyst Paul Cruickshank said. "But there may have been a method behind this and a reason behind this, and that may have been to protect an insider at Sharm el-Sheikh airport."