Egyptair 804 - Paris to Cairo, Missing

[allardjd 1,853]

EgyptAir says Flight 804, a Boeing 737 bound for Cairo from Paris has disappeared from radar with 59 passengers and 10 crew members on board. No further information was immediately available.

 

http://www.foxnews.com/world/2016/05/19/egyptair-flight-from-paris-to-cairo-disappears-from-radar.html

[allardjd 1,853]

From  a post at PPRUNE.  Looks like the report that the AC is a 738 is suspect...

 

Quote

FlightRadar 24 shows the aircraft is SU-GCC, an A320-232. 
Flightaware shows the aircraft is a B737-800.

Searching on tail SU-GCC in Flightaware brings up the missing flight MSR804. Strangely it still shows up as a 737-800 for that flight. Website glitch or wrong type filed?

 

EDIT:

That's kind of the way it is with early reporting on air events.  Not even the reported aircraft type can be trusted.

 

JDA

[wain 879]

Just saw this on news..A320...zearch and rescue ongoing...no distress call.. pilot over 6000hrs on 320...usual thing on news bringing on all there 'experts' who are basically guessing what may have happened...sad for all pax on board...just said egypt military received distress signal...

[allardjd 1,853]

The Egyptians also reported early on when the Russian AC went down in the Sinai not long ago that a distress call was received, followed later on by all kinds of things like "engine explosion".  Those all later turned out to not be the case.  It may be true, maybe not.  At this early stage you have to pretty much take everything with a grain of salt.

[allardjd 1,853]

More from PPRUNE - poster is quoting various news release headlines, I think...

 

Quote

Latest Rumours....
"Distress Call heard by Miltary"
"Mayday Call issued before crash"
"Distress Call not by pilot but by equipment"
"Fireball Witnessed"
"Military search and rescue teams have received a signal from the missing plane's emergency devices"
"Greek officials investigating reports from island residents that they saw a ball of fire in the sky"

 

 

[MyPC8MyBrain 273]

MS804 was last seen as a huge fireball over Greece where its believed to go down,

10 min before it went off the radar there was still communications with Greece controller,

the crash site is reported to be about 300km north of Egypt,

no mayday signal was sent out by the pilots,

 

 

[mutley 4,495]

I think the most reliable source is the 'horses mouth' 

 

https://www.facebook.com/EGYPTAIR/?fref=ts

 

This is their latest..

 

Press Release No 7

EGYPTAIR denies all misleading information published by news websites and on the social media channels regarding the reasons of the disappearance of EGYPTAIR flight MS804 and the company confirms that the reason of disappearance hasn't been yet confirmed.
EGYPTAIR Calls for media resources to be assured of the information they post or release and to abide by the official press releases issued by EGYPTAIR media center.

[MyPC8MyBrain 273]

apparently there was a signal sent out by the plane emergency system!

this is the flight path and approximation where it was last seen,

lets all hope for a "Miracle on the Mediterranean"

 

[MyPC8MyBrain 273]

there are many vessels in the area who joined the search for the missing plane

 

 

 

[J G 927]

It does not look to good for the passengers and crew. If there were only 59 passengers onboard then  I suppose that is a small mercy.

The crew of ten seems a bit excessive though, 737 800's would normally have a crew of about 7.

 

 

[allardjd 1,853]

Three of the crew were listed as "security", possibly the equivalent of air marshals - for all the good it did them.

 

John

[MyPC8MyBrain 273]

some derbies recovered by the Greece authorities,

speculations are now in the air of this being a terror attack once again

 

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2016/05/19/egyptair-flight-from-paris-to-cairo-disappears-from-radar/

 

 

[dodgy-alan 1,587]

Whatever happened it's bound to make people jittery, especially those flying out of Paris..

[brett 2,310]

or those flying EgyptAir for that matter.

[J G 927]

Lets hope they find the Black Box as soon as possible. There have been several aircraft that have gone down over the sea and no real explanation as to why has been forthcoming for them. 

 

The relatives of the victims of such a disaster don't get much if any remains to bury and so closure is often very hard to achieve, this must be so much harder to cope with if there is no explanation as to how or why their loved ones have been taken from them.  

[allardjd 1,853]

Some recent developments in this...

 

Automated systems monitoring information transmitted from the plane indicated smoke in an avionics bay below the cockpit floor and later, failure of several electrically powered devices, including something described as a "flight control system", which could be any of a number of things, some critical, some not so much.  

 

Some reports indicate that "spurious" smoke alarms are common, and that the emergency procedure/checklist for avionics bay smoke is convoluted, seldom practiced in the simulator (perhaps once each year or two) and can lead to shutting down flight envelope protections built into the Airbus.

 

Some pings have been reported heard from the black boxes in the last few days.  This report has raised hopes that discovery/recovery is imminent.

 

No terrorist organizations have taken credit for this event.

 

John

[brett 2,310]

Thanks for the update John, I sure hope they find the flight recorder.

[Captain Coffee 2,030]

I recall the electrical panels in C-141 avionic bays... back when I used to crawl all over those things as an USAF instrument tech...they were a maze of wires and terminals and relays distributing large power loads from huge buss panels to various systems. If a section of something like that shorted out for whatever reason, it could take out "several electronic systems" including a flight computer or multiple transmitters/sensors....ie...play havoc with random systems.

 

^falls into the category of SWAG: Semi-Wild Ass Guess.

[allardjd 1,853]

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3621384/EgyptAir-s-MS804-Airbus-jet-forced-make-THREE-emergency-landings-24-hours-crashed-Mediterranean.html

 

Yeah, I know - it's the Daily Mail.  They're reporting three quick turnarounds after take-offs by this specific aircraft the previous day when ACARS signaled technical problems.  In each case, the aircraft was inspected and nothing found.  Not sure if these were smoke detector events or something else.

 

I'm beginning to wonder, in the absence of any terrorist organizations taking credit, whether this might indeed have been a technical fault.  I guess it's equally likely, or perhaps more than likely, that a lone-wolf terrorist with air-side access to the plane put something aboard, either in Paris or at one of the earlier stops, all of which have much more questionable security than Paris. With a lone-wolf, the absence of a claim of credit is plausible.  

 

Anyway, it appears that there's hope that the recorders will be found and recovered fairly soon and that may provide more insight.

 

John

[allardjd 1,853]

EgyptAir plane wreckage found, Egypt says...

 

http://EgyptAir plane wreckage found, Egypt says... http://www.foxnews.com/world/2016/06/15/egyptair-plane-wreckage-found-egypt-says.html?intcmp=hpbt4

 

[allardjd 1,853]

Egypt: Black box of crashed plane found, pulled out of sea

 

http://my.earthlink.net/article/top?guid=20160616/9a4a24eb-8cb2-46d8-8a68-2fe8482e665d

 

The Egyptian committee said the so-called black box — one of the two on board the plane — has been damaged but that the vessel searching for the wreckage managed to safely recover the "memory unit, which is the most important in the recorder."

 

Leaked flight data indicated a sensor had detected smoke in a lavatory and a fault in two of the plane's cockpit windows in the final moments of the flight.

[brett 2,310]

That's not what I expected John based on the actions of the aircraft, hope there's more info to come.

 

I'm sure others knew this but from what I understand the NTSB is tasked by Congress with finding the one and only one biggest cause of an aircraft crash. That means even if there were mechanical problems, manufacturer negligence or a series of unfortunate incidents that led to the cause of the plane coming down, in the large portion of findings the pilots are the cause. This is because when it comes down to it the pilots and particularly the Captain is responsible for his ship. Sounds hinky to me.

[allardjd 1,853]

Egypt pulls second black box of doomed plane out of the sea

 

http://my.earthlink.net/article/top?guid=20160617/0e754ad8-ba4a-41a4-82bb-77dedf4d3e6d

 

 

[allardjd 1,853]

 

Quote

 

That's not what I expected John based on the actions of the aircraft, hope there's more info to come.

 

I'm sure others knew this but from what I understand the NTSB is tasked by Congress with finding the one and only one biggest cause of an aircraft crash. That means even if there were mechanical problems, manufacturer negligence or a series of unfortunate incidents that led to the cause of the plane coming down, in the large portion of findings the pilots are the cause. This is because when it comes down to it the pilots and particularly the Captain is responsible for his ship. Sounds hinky to me.

 

 

That "leaked" info two posts up is not from the data recorders - it's probably from ACARS transmissions from the plane itself while in flight.

 

Also, note that the NTSB does not have a dog in this fight.  The AC was not US-built, US registered, US owned and the departure and destination airports and all the overflown territory was not US.  What you say about the NTSB is valid but it won't be them doing the work on this one.

 

John

[brett 2,310]

Thanks for the clarifications John.