Report: Cause of Metrojet A321 crash still uncertain

Egypt’s Accident Investigation Committee has said its initial observation of the aircraft wreckage from the Oct. 31 MetroJet Airbus 321 crash “does not yet allow for identifying the origin of the inflight breakup.”

In a report released Saturday, the committee said the debris is “scattered over a wide area more than 13 km in length, which is consistent with an inflight breakup.” However, the report went on to state that “some parts of the wreckage are missing and it is hoped to locate them in the coming days.”

The committee stated that since Wednesday visits to the accident site were hampered by bad weather. “As soon as weather improves, future visits will be arranged,” it said.

“The wreckage will be recovered to a safe and secure place in Cairo for further examination of each part, during which Metallurgy specialists will be involved. The committee will recover the aircraft system computers, which have special non-volatile memory,” it stated.

The report also said the flight recorders, which were recovered on the first day of the accident, were “successfully downloaded.”

According to the report, a preliminary review of the flight data recorder indicated:

• “Takeoff time UTC : 03:50:06, with recording stopped at UTC time: 04:13:20, so duration from takeoff to the end of recordings is 23 minutes and 14 seconds.
• Last recorded altitude is 30,888 ft. with the aircraft still in climbing mode.
• Last recorded Airspeed is 281 knots, while autopilot (1) was engaged until the end of recording.”

The committee said the cockpit voice recorder (CVR) “was successfully downloaded and a first listening was done. Although the CVR team is still in the phase of writing the transcript, which will take time to finalize, a noise was heard in the last second of the CVR recording. A spectral analysis will be carried out by specialized labs in order to identify the nature of this sound.”

The committee said it is "considering with great attention all possible scenarios for the cause of the accident” and has not yet reached any conclusion.