The flight data and voice recorders showed “everything was normal” until both failed at 24 minutes after takeoff, pointing to “a very sudden explosive decompression,” one source said.
The data “strongly favours” the theory a bomb on board had brought down the plane, he added.
Another source said the plane had gone down suddenly and violently.
Meanwhile, British airlines were scrambling to evacuate passengers in Sharm el-Sheikh after cancelling flights to the Red Sea resort from which the doomed Airbus had taken off Saturday.
One of the black boxes recovered from the crash site showed that the plane suffered “a violent, sudden” end, a source close to the case in Paris told AFP.
The flight data recorder showed that “everything was normal during the flight, absolutely normal, and suddenly there was nothing”. There is more.
*** ISIS has taken full responsibility for downing the aircraft due in part to Russia’s air and ground campaign in Syria. All the while, Russia has said there are no Russian ground troops in Syria but facts say otherwise.
WASHINGTON: Moscow’s military force in Syria has grown to about 4,000 personnel, but this and more than a month of Russian air strikes have not led to pro-government forces making significant territorial gains, U.S. security officials and independent experts said.
Moscow, which has maintained a military presence in Syria for decades as an ally of the ruling Assad family, had an estimated 2,000 personnel in the country when it began air strikes on Sept. 30. The Russian force has since roughly doubled and the number of bases it is using has grown, U.S. security officials said.
The Russians have suffered combat casualties, including deaths, said three U.S. security officials familiar with U.S. intelligence reporting, adding that they did not know the exact numbers.
The United States has extensive intelligence assets in the region, along with satellite imagery and electronic eavesdropping coverage and contacts with moderate Sunni and Kurdish rebels on the ground in Syria.
Russia’s foreign ministry declined to comment on the size of the Russian contingent in Syria or any casualties it has suffered. It referred questions to the Russian Defense Ministry, which did not respond to written questions submitted by Reuters.
The Kremlin has said there are no Russian troops in combat roles in Syria, though it has said there are trainers and advisers working alongside the Syrian military and also forces guarding Russia’s bases in western Syria.
Then there is the Egypt component:
Sharm al Sheik has been an elitist resort for many years and is one of the crown jewels in Egypt for tourism. Resorts in the area include the Four Seasons, Hyatt, Marriott and others, The area is rich in coral reefs, golf and yachts.
One must wonder where the full and disclosed passenger manifest from the downed aircraft is. Egypt needs tourism to survive for economic revenue and was getting some help from the UK in this endeavor. The Brits had in fact dispatched a large security team to the Sharm al Sheik airport to upgrade all security measures and ten months ago gave an all clear but did suggest additional steps be taken with particular regard to searching via x-ray all luggage and cargo. This was never completed, pointing to Egypt’s security systems at that airport failed. This is key as that resort has previously been used by worldwide government leaders for diplomatic meetings and as a playground. The southern part of the Sinai since the 1980’s has also been victim of several yet intermittent Islamic attacks.
al Sisi is quite anxious to rebuild the country with good reason such that there are plans on the drawing board to expand tourists locations and a new Middle East capitol.
Spiegel: The Egyptian government has decided to build a new capital city east of Cairo, smack in the middle of the desert. “A global capital,” the building minister announced at a conference on the Red Sea in March. At the event, investors from the Gulf states, China and Saudi Arabia gathered around a model of the new metropolis, admiring the business quarter, with its Dubai-style skyscrapers, the small residential homes in greenbelts and the football stadium. The city is to be situated on 700 square kilometers of land, with an airport larger than London’s Heathrow. President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi even wooed investors himself. He recently announced that construction would begin in January.
It is to be a capital created in accordance with the wishes of the country’s leadership elite. It may not fit well with the country as it currently exists, but it will conform to their vistions of Egypt’s future — a planned, manageable city conceived from the top down in the same way the pharaohs once created the pyramids. The new Cairo will be a beautiful place, an “innovation center,” environmentally sustainable, with a high quality of life, city planners are pledging. They want it to be a city where people can breathe without having to cough.
The old Cairo is an ugly city, an affront to the senses. Even as you begin heading into the city from the airport, the buildings are already blackened from pollution. The cacophony of car horns is painful to the ears and during winter months, the smog hangs like thick fog over the Nile. The city suffers from thrombosis, with streets so crammed with cars they’re like clogged arteries. Yet women in high-heel shoes saunter along the banks of the Nile smiling. Even though the place seems unbearable, Cairo is loved.
It is a city of contradictions, created from the bottom up, even though that had never been the intention. It has been growing wildly since the 1960s — from 3.5 million back then to 18 million now — against the will of the country’s rulers. Fully 11 million people live in structures that were built illegally and new residential districts continue popping up around the city like weeds in a field. The city center is becoming increasingly dense, to the point that, in one of the city’s largest cemeteries, people have even converted burial chambers into their living quarters. Cairo is dirty and chaotic, and, of course, it’s a city that gave birth to a revolution. More here.
