Search crews are scouring for further wreckage of EgyptAir flight 804 —including for the plane’s black boxes, which could provide vital clues to why the jetliner crashed killing all 66 on board.
Planes and vessels from Egypt and five other countries are searching a wide area of the Mediterranean on Saturday, a day after the Egyptian army found debris from the Airbus 320 in the sea 290km north of Alexandria.
No hard evidence has emerged to why the plane dropped off radar, swerved wildly and plummeted early Thursday morning.
While the presence of smoke inside the Airbus A320 is consistent with an explosion, some experts believe that it is also evidence of some form of technical fault.
Investigators are considering the possibility of a terror attack.
Details of smoke in the aircraft emerged from data pulled from the A320’s Aircraft Communications Addressing and Reporting System (ACARS) and published in the Aviation Herald.
It shows that smoke was detected in the aircraft lavatory at 2.26 am, with a second sensor going off a minute later with further faults until 2.29 am, when the system ceased recording.
According to the Wall Street Journal, people “familiar with the matter” say that the alerts could be an indication of a problem with the flight control system.
The industry publication Aviation Herald reports that sensors detected smoke in the plane’s lavatory, suggesting a fire onboard.
