[This story was updated on November 2 to include more current information.]
Accident investigators from Egypt, Russia and France are working to discover how an Airbus A321 operated by Russian airline Metrojet Russia crashed in Egypt’s central Sinai desert on October 31 just over 20 minutes into a flight from the Red Sea resort of Sharm el-Sheikh to St. Petersburg. There were no survivors among the 217 passengers and seven crew on board the aircraft, but the search team has recovered the flight data and cockpit voice recorders.
The management of Metrojet Russia, which is owned by the Siberia based group Kogalymavia, has been quick to suggest that the crash was a result of “external influence,” indicating it believes the aircraft was destroyed by a criminal act. Russian officials have been more cautious about making a connection with alleged terrorist activity, but on November 1 Victor Sorochenko, head of the Russian Interstate Aviation Committee, told reporters that the aircraft had broken into two pieces in midair, scattering debris over an area of almost eight square miles.
On the same day, Egyptian civil aviation minister Hossam Kamal denied earlier reports attributed to air traffic controllers, that the aircraft’s captain, Valery Nemov, had requested an emergency landing soon after takeoff. Nemov had a more than 12,000 flight hours in his logbook, including around 3,800 in Airbus narrowbodies. Russian authorities launched an immediate criminal investigation into the airline, as is standard practice in the event of an accident.
Immediate claims by a local affiliate of ISIS that it had shot down the aircraft were quickly dismissed by officials and military experts. It could not have been hit by shoulder-launched missiles at the confirmed altitude it reached before the crash.
According to data from flight tracking website FlightRadar, Flight 7K9268 was at 31,000 feet before suddenly losing altitude at a rate of almost 5,000 feet in just a minute before disappearing from radar coverage. The radar data reveals rapid changes in airspeed just before the jet disappeared. Officials have confirmed that the aircraft failed to make planned contact with air traffic controllers in Cyprus around 23 minutes into the flight.
According to Airbus, the aircraft (S/N 663) had logged more than 56,000 flight hours on nearly 21,000 flights. The airframer has sent a technical team to Egypt to support the investigation.
The A321 (tail number EI-ETJ) was built in 1997 and since 2012 had been registered in Ireland to Metrojet Russia. It was powered by a pair of IAE V2500 engines.