Friday 30 December 2016

Egyptian claim of explosive traces on MS804 met with deep skepticism


Full article on alarabiya.net

Under normal circumstances, news that traces of explosives have been found after a major air disaster would send the safety-obsessed aviation industry into a headspin. That was what happened in October 2015, when security was tightened across the globe after it became apparent that Metrojet Flight 9268 had been downed by a bomb in Egypt.

Yet, just one year on, purported evidence of TNT traces on the victims of EgyptAir flight MS804 – which crashed en route from Paris to Cairo in May – has been met with deafening silence by the industry and angry dismissals by relatives of the victims.

Top of their concerns is the knowledge that Egypt has manipulated air crash investigations in the past. In 2002, the Egyptian Civil Aviation Authority (ECAA) rejected the findings of the more experienced US National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) after parallel investigations into EgyptAir Flight 990, which had crashed into the Atlantic Ocean three years previously...