The 2016 crash of EgyptAir flight MS804 from Paris to Cairo, which the Egyptian authorities initially described as a terrorist act, was caused by a pilot who was smoking a cigarette, according to an investigation. The plane disappeared in the Mediterranean Sea between Crete and the coasts of northern Egypt on May 19, 2016, carrying 66 passengers and crew, all of whom were killed. It took a month to locate the wreckage. Egyptian investigators initially said they had found traces of explosives in the remains of the flight victims. The Cairo Attorney General ordered an urgent state security investigation, but its findings were never made public. A 134-page confidential research paper written by French experts and sent to the Paris Court of Appeals now attributes the cause of the crash to pilots smoking cigarettes. According to the report, received by the Italian newspaper Corriere della Sera, the co-pilot’s oxygen mask was left in a state of “emergency” instead of “normal” by a maintenance engineer. The cigarette caused the oxygen to burn, causing a spark that led to a fire. Shortly before it disappeared, the plane’s detection system warned of smoke in the front of the plane, the report said. The ACARS system, which transmits short messages between aircraft and ground stations, sent seven missions in two seconds, including a warning about a malfunctioning computer system that is critical to flight maneuvering mechanisms. Neither the pilot, Mohammed Saied Ali Shokair, nor co-pilot Mohammed Ahmed Mamdouh Assem asked for help, the report said. At the time of the crash, authorities were on high alert following the terrorist attack on the Bataclan concert hall in Paris and Brussels. Due to allegations of terrorism, the Egyptian authorities did not publish their findings and did not submit a report within one year, as required by international law. The French Civil Aviation Safety Research and Analysis Office (BEA) has analyzed the plane’s black box, but intergovernmental agreements are preventing the French authorities – which are not officially responsible for the investigation – from disclosing any information. According to the Convention on International Civil Aviation (ICAO), the country responsible for the investigation must submit a public report within 12 months of the incident. If he can not do so, he must publish an interim report for each anniversary of the event. The Egyptian authorities never published their findings, while the French authorities could not reveal any information, despite the fact that 15 French nationals were killed in the crash. A source close to the French investigation cited the media in May 2017 that no traces of explosives were found in the remains of French victims on the plane. In a rare public statement, BEA said in July 2018 that “the most likely case is that a cockpit fire broke out during the voyage and spread rapidly, leading to a loss of control of the aircraft.” However, he said that “it was necessary to have a final report on the incident in order to be able to present to the Egyptian authorities any differences of opinion, as defined by international regulations.” The families of the victims have been demanding for a long time to find out the answers to their many questions. “Six years later, we are still trapped between the desire to know the truth and the feeling of exhaustion, because things are not going well,” Julie Heslouin, who lost both her brother and her father, told Corriere della Sera. accident. “We want to know why we lost our loved ones and we do not know until today.”
