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An explosion on board is the most likely cause of the A321 crash, Stratfor experts say

In their opinion, explosive device carried in hand luggage

Experts from the private American intelligence and analytical company Stratfor consider the most likely cause of the plane crash over Egypt to be the carrying of an explosive device on board the Airbus A321. This is stated in the organization's published report.

"Although we cannot completely rule out the possibility of an aircraft failure, such an explanation would be unusual given the circumstances of the crash," the report's authors said. According to them, most plane crashes that occur due to failure of aircraft equipment occur during takeoff and landing, when the mechanical stress on board increases. “An airplane rarely breaks down while flying at altitude,” experts note.

The report also states that in the event of an equipment failure, the pilots of the airliner would most likely have been able to maneuver, and the plane would have flown to the ground without any catastrophic consequences.

In addition, analysts consider it unlikely that the plane was shot down by Islamic State militants (a group banned in the Russian Federation) from the Sinai Peninsula. “Although militants in the area were able to use MANPADS to shoot down an Egyptian helicopter and fire rockets at an Israeli aircraft, Flight 9268 was outside the weapon's range,” the report said.

“Given the improbability of alternative scenarios, it appears that the most likely explanation for the plane crash is the presence of an explosive device on board,” the report’s authors conclude. In their opinion, the explosive device was carried in hand luggage.

Earlier, CBS News reported that an American satellite recorded in the infrared spectrum above Sinai Peninsula at the time of the crash of the Russian A321 in Egypt.

On the morning of October 31, a Russian passenger plane Airbus A321 of Kogalymavia airlines crashed over the Sinai Peninsula during a flight from Sharm el-Sheikh to St. Petersburg. All 224 people on board the plane were killed. On Saturday, the A321 flight recorders were found at the crash site, and on Sunday, experts in Egypt began deciphering them. The IAC reported that the airliner collapsed in the air.

Everything indicates that a technical problem led to the A321 crash, said Egyptian government spokesman Hussam al-Kawish.

“The artificial satellites at the disposal of the United States and Russia have eliminated the possibility of a catastrophe due to a terrorist attack. Everything indicates that the plane crashed due to a technical problem inside,” RIA Novosti quotes him as saying.

Let us remind you that the Airbus-321 aircraft of the Kogalymavia company took off early on Saturday morning from Sharm el-Sheikh to St. Petersburg, over the Sinai Peninsula. There were 217 passengers and seven crew members on board. They all died. The cause of the disaster is not yet clear.

According to some reports, the destruction of the plane occurred while still in the air. Russian transport authorities call it unlikely. No traces of explosives were found on the fragments of the plane.

On Tuesday, an Egyptian medical expert involved in the inspection said the nature of the injuries to the bodies of the A321 passengers on board before impact with the ground.

However, a source at the Center for Forensic Medicine said that a preliminary examination of mine explosive traces on the bodies of the crash victims.

A Pentagon official stated that in the sky at the time of the disaster Russian airliner thermal flash. A Pentagon spokesman also confirmed that the plane "broke up into very high altitude“, and from the data received from the satellite it follows that at the moment of the flight “some kind of explosion occurred.”

Later that day, a representative of the Interstate Aviation Committee said that there was information that there was a thermal flash on the A321 plane before the crash.

On the night of Monday to Tuesday, CBS News reported that at the time of the crash of the A321 Kogalymavia aircraft, the American satellite experienced a thermal flash over the Sinai. As the TV channel clarified, one of the reasons could be a bomb, but an explosion in the fuel tank or engine as a result of a mechanical failure is also possible.

Unofficial sources reported that from the recording of conversations between the flight crew and dispatchers, it follows that the situation on board four minutes before the plane disappeared from radar remained, the crew conducted normal negotiations with dispatchers, nothing indicated any problems on board, and the crew also did not report them. The moment the airliner disappears from the radar screens is preceded in the recording by sounds uncharacteristic of a normal flight.

Head of the Investigative Committee of Russia Alexander Bastrykin on Tuesday. The full commission to investigate the causes of the plane crash was at the crash site, where it examined the wreckage of the plane.

Exactly a year ago, on October 31, 2015, the most massive plane crash in Russia in terms of the number of victims occurred. Then in the north of the Sinai Peninsula an A321 aircraft Russian airline"Kogalymavia". There were 217 passengers on board, including 24 children, and seven crew members. They all died. Russian authorities have recognized the incident as a terrorist attack, but the international investigation has not yet been completed.

On October 31, an A321 aircraft of the Russian airline Kogalymavia was performing chartered flight from Sharm el-Sheikh to St. Petersburg. The airliner took off at 5:50 am and disappeared from radar 23 minutes later. On the same day, Egyptian government search teams discovered the wreckage of a destroyed plane near the city of Nehel in the northern Sinai Peninsula. All 224 people on board died, including 219 Russians, four citizens of Ukraine and one native of Belarus.

Causes of the A321 crash

The international investigation, led by Egyptian aviation authorities, is not yet over. Representatives of Russia, France, Germany, Ireland and the USA take part in it.

Western media were the first to report that a terrorist attack could have occurred on board the A321, shortly after the plane crash, citing their sources in the intelligence services and officials. From these publications it followed that the US and British authorities considered the version of a terrorist attack to be the most likely. However, in Moscow for a long time publicly distanced itself from it, calling the version of the terrorist attack premature and calling to wait for the official results of the investigation. And only on November 6, a decision was made to suspend air traffic with Egypt until the causes of the A321 crash were clarified and to evacuate the Russians there.

Officially, the FSB terrorist attack that occurred over Sinai only two and a half weeks after the disaster, on November 17. According to the department, an improvised explosive device went off during the flight. Vladimir Putin, at a meeting of the Security Council, find the organizers of the crash “anywhere on the planet” and destroy them.

However, even after these statements, the Egyptian authorities continued to insist that the most likely cause of the disaster was a technical problem. And only in February 2016, the country's President Abdel Fatah al-Sisi admitted that a terrorist attack had occurred on board the A321.

In September, the Kommersant newspaper, citing sources, reported that an international technical commission had established the exact location of the explosion on the plane. According to the publication, experts determined that the terrorists mined the oversized luggage compartment in the tail of the plane, hiding an explosive device between baby strollers and wicker furniture carried by tourists.

Russia and the CIA believe that the explosion on board was organized by Wilayat Sinai (until 2014 - Ansar Bayt al-Maqdis), a cell of the terrorist organization Islamic State (ISIS) banned in Russia. The group claimed responsibility for the downing of A321: On November 18, 2015, the Islamic State's propaganda magazine, Dabiq, published a photo of an improvised explosive device made from a can of Schweppes soda. As stated in the article, this is the device that was activated on board the A321. In August 2016, the Egyptian military reported the murder of Wilayat Sinai leader Abu Duaa al-Ansari, suspected of organizing the terrorist attack.

Scandalous case

Relatives of those killed in the disaster have repeatedly complained about the progress of the investigation and the process of paying compensation. In December, lawyer Igor Trunov, on behalf of 35 relatives, filed a complaint with the Basmanny Court about the inaction of the head of the Investigative Committee, Alexander Bastrykin. According to the lawyer, it was expressed in the fact that the Investigative Committee ignored two appeals from relatives. In one of them, they asked to be informed of the number of the criminal case, to be recognized as victims and to be acquainted with the investigation materials. Another complaint concerned Ingosstrakh. The appeal alleged that the company fraudulently obtains from relatives of the deceased statements limiting their right to go to court to obtain compensation. Ingosstrakh itself categorically rejected these accusations. And the claim against Bastrykin was rejected.

Consequences

After the crash of the Kogalymavia plane, Russia suspended air traffic with Egypt, and tour operators were prohibited from working in this direction. They have been waiting all year for the resumption of communications with the country, which for many years was one of the main resort destinations for Russians. According to the latest data, this may happen no earlier than December-January.

To resume flights, the Egyptian side needs to fulfill a number of airport security requirements (their full list has not been officially published). During the year, Russia repeatedly sent its specialists to Egypt for inspections at the airports of Cairo, Sharm el-Sheikh and Hurghada, but each time there were violations. According to sources of the Al-Watan newspaper, quoted by TASS, “a number of Russian structures refuse to discuss the issue of resuming air traffic with Egypt until the results of the official investigation appear.”

With the closure of air traffic, Egypt suffered significant losses. From the collapse of tourism, one of the country’s key industries (more than 11% of GDP until November 2015), Egypt’s budget, according to Reuters, lost more than three billion dollars.

The crash of the Russian airbus and the subsequent cessation of flights to the Arab Republic led to problems for Kogalymavia itself and the associated tour operator Brisco, which was the customer of flight 9268. The case of declaring the carrier bankrupt has been dragging on since the spring of 2015, the next meeting will take place on November 10. In March, Rosaviatsia limited Kogalymavia’s operator’s certificate and deprived it of access to 13 international destinations.

The organizer of the flight, tour operator Brisco, suspended operations on August 2 until it repaid debts to clients and agencies. As reported on the Brisco website, after the closure of flights to Egypt and Turkey, the company suffered “colossal financial and economic losses.”

The management of Kogalymavia on Monday came out with its version of the cause of the A321 crash in Egypt: the equipment was in good working order, the crew was professional, the incident that occurred in 2001 did not affect the plane, the airliner collapsed from external influences. This version, however, was denied by the Egyptian commission of inquiry. Experts are now discussing the two versions as approximately equally probable.

The general director of the Kogalymavia airline, Alexander Snagovsky, said on Monday that he believes the reason for the Russian Airbus-321 on the Sinai Peninsula is external influence. According to him, an aircraft such as the A321 could not have collapsed in the air due to the failure of any technical systems. The only cause of destruction in the air, according to him, can be mechanical impact, RIA Novosti reports.

“No fatigue crack can develop to a critical size.”

At the same time, Snagovsky emphasized that Kogalymavia excludes the human factor and the technical factor as versions of the plane crash.

The day before, we recall, the flight crew of Kogalymavia Airlines published a letter in which they stated that the crashed plane was controlled by experienced pilots, whose actions caused the disaster.

However, this version does not fit with the information received from the flight recorders. A Reuters source at the Egyptian investigation commission said that, according to the first data analyzed, the plane was not exposed to external influences and did not send a distress signal before hitting the ground.

Airline version

The airline's deputy general director for technical and production issues, Andrei Averyanov, expanded the airline's version in more detail: when the Kogalymavia A321 aircraft crashed over the Sinai Peninsula, the aircraft most likely received significant structural damage, and the crew completely lost control of the controls. In addition, in less than a minute, the A321 aircraft slowed down by more than 300 km per hour and decreased altitude by 1.5 km. At the same time, not a single attempt to get in touch and report emergency situation was not on board.

“During the transition to the crash, the A321 aircraft most likely suffered significant structural damage that prevented it from continuing to fly. And, apparently, in connection with this, at the same moment the catastrophic situation began to develop, the crew completely lost their ability to work, this is what can explain the fact that there was not a single attempt to get in touch and report an emergency situation on board,” he explained.

A survey of the crews who worked on the A321 that crashed in Egypt confirmed that the airliner was in excellent technical condition. As the air carrier noted, over the last five flights there was not a single comment in the logbook from the A321 crew regarding problems with the aircraft.

The airline also said that on October 26, the aircraft's engines underwent a baroscopic test and no problems were identified.

Kogalymavia claims that repairs carried out in 2001 after the plane’s tail touched the runway during landing (then the plane belonged to a Lebanese carrier) could not have been the cause of the disaster, since the deficiencies would have been discovered since then.

“Regarding fatigue cracks, I should note that work to assess fatigue cracks is carried out at aircraft at intervals of once every five years. We carried out such work with all care on the plane, it was just 2014 in March,” said flight director of Kogalymavia airline Alexander Smirnov.

“Airplane design defines airworthiness standards that ensure that no fatigue cracks can develop to a critical size during the inspection interval,” he added.

A terrorist attack is not ruled out

“Let’s wait for the official results of the investigation, and the commission will tell us about its results, I wouldn’t like to engage in speculation now, this is not in my competence,” suggested Smirnov.

Answering the question whether there could have been a terrorist attack, Smirnov said: “Anything could have happened.”

The Kremlin has not ruled out the possibility of a terrorist attack, although presidential press secretary Dmitry Peskov said that it was necessary to first wait for the results of the investigation.

Let us remind you that on Saturday, the France-Presse agency, without citing sources, published information that the Sinai ISIS cell took responsibility for the death of the plane with people. There was no confirmation of this information, and the Russian Minister of Transport stated that there was no evidence that the plane was shot down. In addition, the Investigative Committee of Russia opened a case under Art. 263 (violation of flight rules and preparation for them) and under Part 3 of Art. 238 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation (provision of services that do not meet safety requirements).

However, experts do not rule out something else - an explosion on board.

Assumptions

Currently, experts are discussing two versions - the destruction of the plane in the air as a result of a terrorist attack and due to technical problems of the plane.

Former head of the French Bureau of Investigation and Security Analysis civil aviation Jean-Paul Troadec stated that, according to the information known on this moment, he can conclude: the plane did not fall in a dive.

“Obviously, the plane did not fall at its peak. There are no small fragments, which suggests that it did not fall in a dive. That’s all that can be said at this stage,” Troadek told Belgian publication La Derniere heure.

“The study of the wreckage and data from the flight recorders will quickly determine which hypothesis is more likely: a crime or an accident,” he said.

Allen Bouilliard, who was involved in investigations in France aviation accidents, told the New York Times that he has little idea what technical problems could cause an in-flight destruction of a modern aircraft like the Airbus A321-200. “A mid-air disruption due to a technical failure seems extremely unlikely to me,” he added.

At the same time, the former head National Council US Transport Safety Officer Mark Rosenker said that he is more inclined to believe that the cause of the disaster was technology rather than a terrorist attack, citing in favor of his version the fact that the plane was damaged in 2001 - when landing at high speed in Kaira's tail touched runway. Then the board was operated by Middle East Airlines. However, Rosenker did not deny the possibility of a terrorist attack.

President of the Civil Aviation Partner Foundation, Honored Pilot of the USSR Oleg Smirnov, in an interview with the VZGLYAD newspaper, said that he does not rule out both the version of a terrorist attack and the technical one. According to him, it is necessary to check whether the skin was opened during the repair of the aircraft after the accident in 2001: if the repair was limited to replacing the tail, specialists might not have seen the microcracks that had formed on the fuselage. Such microcracks sooner or later lead to tragedy. In addition, Smirnov did not rule out depressurization: for example, an engine explosion occurred, after which the turbine could break through the skin of the aircraft, and the aircraft was torn apart by the air flow.

Initiatives

Meanwhile, Russia's main legislative body continues to discuss measures that could make the country's aviation industry safer. On Saturday, we recall, deputy Alexey Pushkov proposed banning the operation of aircraft over 15 years old, and on Sunday he added that two or three carriers should be left on the market.

Anatoly Vyborny, a member of the State Duma Security Committee, was not so categorical. In an interview with the newspaper VZGLYAD, he expressed the opinion that such restrictions need to be discussed with aviation professionals. He also drew attention to the need to combat the supply of counterfeit spare parts for aircraft.

A member of the State Duma Committee on Transport, Oleg Nilov, took the initiative to introduce a state monopoly on passenger air transportation: “I believe that we need to consider the issue - and I have already made such a proposal - about returning the state monopoly. In any case, those companies that carry out passenger air transportation must be under 100% state control,” Nilov said, noting that Russia has been one of the first in the number of aviation accidents in recent years. “If you count the number of flights and the population, I’m afraid that this will be the first place,” the parliamentarian added.

Nilov recalled that there had already been experience of a state monopoly on air transportation, including in Soviet times. “As an option for a compromise, I propose: 51% of the shares are in the hands of the state, 49% in the hands of private investors and entrepreneurs,” the deputy clarified.

“It will be difficult to do this through some kind of law, amendments to the law. It would be more correct to contact the government with such an initiative, and if it considers this possible, it will either prepare its own regulations, decisions and, if necessary, legislative acts,” he explained to TASS.

A member of the State Duma Committee on Budget and Taxes, Evgeny Fedorov, expressed the opinion that small airlines, whose fleet consists of three to ten aircraft, cannot ensure full flight safety. “There are companies - three to five to ten aircraft. It is clear that they will not be able to pull out security in full. You need to have several consolidated airlines, like in banking. The strategic line itself is wrong,” he said.

"Behind Last year accidents in the aviation industry increased by 35%,” the deputy concluded.