Masks, Smoke, and Mirrors: The untold story of EgyptAir flight 804
On the 19th of May 2016, an Airbus A320 en route from Paris to Cairo disappeared from radar at cruising altitude over the Mediterranean Sea, spiraling to its doom from 37,000 feet until it was dashed against the night-black water. What caused the loss of the EgyptAir flight and its 66 occupants should have been uncovered by a straightforward inquiry, but instead, the case quickly evolved into one of the more unnerving and unnecessary mysteries of 21st century aviation. The problem wasn’t that investigators couldn’t find the cause — it was that not all of them seemingly wanted to.
Four months into the Egyptian-led investigation, Egyptian and French experts erupted into a public dispute over whether the crash was an accident at all. Was EgyptAir flight 804 brought down by a bomb, as Egypt announced, or had a fire erupted in the cockpit, as French investigators still believed? Before the question could be properly resolved, the investigation was taken out of the hands of the accident investigators, and the regular updates suddenly fell silent. And for eight years, the crash remained an uncomfortable mystery.
That is, until now.
In October 2024, Egypt unexpectedly released a 663-page final report containing not only its own arguments in favor of an intentional explosion, but also a nearly complete French report arguing for a cause that was totally different — and frankly much scarier. Although not everything contained in this massive release is convincing, and some of it appears to be plainly untrue, these two reports contain a treasure trove of previously unseen evidence that nevertheless sheds a substantial amount of light on what happened on that fateful night over the Mediterranean, and a careful reading reveals a probable story of the demise of flight 804 — a story that can now be told for the very first time.
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Foreword
This article is one I thought I might never write. I’ve been writing about plane crashes in some capacity for 7 years, and EgyptAir flight 804 has been hanging over my head throughout that entire time period, still unsolved. It’s a relief to be able to say, by the end of this article, what most likely happened.
That said, this story is as much about how we almost didn’t get the truth as it is about that truth itself. For that reason, the storytelling format in this article is different from my others. Instead of telling the story of the flight and then analyzing significant moments, I’ve organized the information in the order that it first became known to the public, culminating with the release of the final report and the revelations contained therein, in order to provide context for how we ended up with two competing reports released 8 years after the accident, only one of which makes any sense. As such, the table of contents is as follows:
Part 1: Flight 804 is Missing — Events immediately surrounding the accident.
Part 2: Cold Case — The investigation enters a frozen state.
Part 3: Explosive Evidence — Analyzing the contents of the Egyptian report.
Part 4: Inferno — Analyzing the contents of the French report.
Part 5: I Ask Forgiveness from God — Possible narrative of the accident.
Part 6: A Legacy to Be Written — Conclusion and next steps.
This article also contains citations in the format [Ref #:Page #-#]. See the article endnotes for a link to the bibliography.
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Part 1: Flight 804 is Missing
The time was approximately 2:25 in the morning at the high altitude Athens Area Control Center in Athens, Greece, callsign “Athena.” The overnight shift was on duty, monitoring en route traffic over mainland Greece and adjacent portions of the Mediterranean Sea, aircraft identification blocks drifting steadily across radar screens. Even in the dead of night, Athena never slept.
In the Athens Area Control Center’s sector 5, a steady flow of communications lit up the controller’s radio.
“Sky Travel 2512, contact Cairo 127.7, bye bye.”
“Roger Athena, bye bye, Athena, Sky Travel 2512.”
“Radar, Gulf Air 006, good morning.”
“Good morning 006, radar contact, flight level 410 to MAGIS.”
“Thank you.”
“Air France 4320, hello, radar contact, 370 RUGOS.”
“To RUGOS.”
“Ethiopian 706, continue present heading.”
“Present heading Ethiopian 706.”
“Ethiopian 502 contact Macedonia radar 133 decimal 575, bye bye.”
“133, 575, bye.”
“EL AL 388 contact Nicosia radar 125.5 Kali.”
“125.5 Kalimira…” [2:437–439]
Near the bottom of the radar screen, an EgyptAir flight was approaching the handoff point to the neighboring Cairo ACC, at an imaginary GPS waypoint called KUMBI. The controller hailed it with the handover instructions.
“EgyptAir 804, contact Cairo 124.7, bye bye.”
But there was no reply.
After eleven seconds, the controller repeated, “EgyptAir 804, contact Cairo 124.7.” Another 15 seconds passed in silence. “EgyptAir 804?” the controller asked.
Four more times, the controller called flight 804, only to be met with silence. The aircraft’s radar return was still on the screen, still displaying its cleared cruising altitude of 37,000 feet, proceeding on course. [1:153]
Athena called Cairo to ask whether the aircraft was already in contact with the next sector. The answer was negative. Athena and several nearby aircraft then tried to raise flight 804 on the emergency frequency 121.5, without success. [1:153]
And then flight 804’s radar return abruptly disappeared. There had been no distress call, no sudden loss of altitude, no emergency code transmitted. It was simply gone.
Within three minutes, Athens area controllers notified the Hellenic Air Force that they had lost radar and radio contact with a passenger plane, and by 2:48, the aircraft was declared officially missing. [1:154] There was no longer any doubt: an Airbus A320 with 66 souls on board had surely gone down somewhere in the eastern Mediterranean. It was the start of what promised to be a long and complex story, but no one that night yet knew just how fraught that story would be.
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Before the first piece of wreckage had been located, before the first ships had even reached the aircraft’s last known position, phones would have been ringing at the headquarters of the Egyptian Aircraft Accident Investigation Directorate, or EAAID, the civil agency responsible for investigating incidents and accidents on Egyptian territory or involving Egyptian aircraft. As a signatory of the Chicago Convention on Civil Aviation, it was Egypt’s right and responsibility to lead the investigation into the loss of flight 804 under the principles of the Convention’s Annex 13, which holds the aircraft’s state of registration responsible for determining the cause of an aircraft accident in international waters. [3:32]
This was not the first time that an EgyptAir flight had crashed at sea, outside any state’s sovereign maritime territory. In 1999, when EgyptAir flight 990 plunged into the Atlantic Ocean 100 kilometers off Nantucket Island in the United States, Annex 13 permitted Egypt to lead the investigation, but due to the crash’s relative proximity to America, Egypt decided to delegate the leadership role to the United States National Transportation Safety Board. That was a decision that many in the Egyptian government came to regret when the NTSB concluded that an EgyptAir first officer had crashed the plane into the ocean on purpose, taking 217 people with him — an accusation that many Egyptians still consider outrageous and embarrassing. [4][6]
This time, however, the crash site was off Egypt’s own coast, and there was no question that Egypt would — and should — lead the investigation. But that didn’t mean they would do so alone. Annex 13 obligates the state of occurrence to invite accredited representatives from several other states, including, if applicable, the state of registry, the state of manufacture of the aircraft, and the state of manufacture of the engines. [3:37] Because the Airbus A320 was manufactured in France and was fitted with American engines, the French Bureau of Inquiry and Analysis (BEA) and the American National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) were invited to participate by sending accredited representatives. Both agencies announced that they would send such representatives, along with support staff from the European Aviation Safety Agency and Airbus. [5:506]
The following day, as international investigators began to arrive, only the barest outline of the flight was known. EgyptAir flight 804 had departed Charles de Gaulle Airport in Paris, France at 21:21 UTC, bound for Cairo, with 56 passengers and 10 crewmembers on board. The crew consisted of two pilots, five flight attendants, and three security officers to deter hijackings. There had been no reports of any abnormality, and the flight appeared to be on course when it suddenly vanished. But besides these facts, little else could be said.
Within a short time, however, search ships from several countries began to encounter floating debris and human remains on the sea surface near the aircraft’s last known position. [6] The wreckage was badly fragmented, suggesting a high speed impact. [5:528] But the first major clue was discovered not at the crash site, but back in Cairo, when it emerged that the airplane had broadcast a series of fault messages and warning indications to EgyptAir’s maintenance facility via the Aircraft Communication Addressing and Reporting System, or ACARS. [7]
ACARS is a satellite- or radio-based communication system that allows flight crews to exchange textual information with ground-based airline personnel while in flight, [8] but it can also function as a maintenance tool, scooping up any reported system faults and broadcasting them automatically to an airline’s maintenance headquarters in order to help mechanics start diagnosing a problem before the aircraft even arrives. [1:79]
As it turned out, flight 804 sent several alarming ACARS messages in the minutes before it crashed. At time 00:26 UTC (02:26 local), the system registered a “lavatory smoke” warning, followed over the next three minutes by a fault with the right cockpit window anti-ice system, a fault in the right sliding cockpit window sensor, smoke in the avionics bay, a fault with the right fixed cockpit window sensor, a fault with the №2 flight control unit, and finally a fault with spoiler-elevator computer №3. [1:80] These systems had no obvious commonalities except that all of their power supplies passed through a common panel in the aft right part of the cockpit. [1:224]
The fact that multiple unrelated systems failed sequentially, accompanied by smoke alarms, represented compelling evidence that there had been a fire on board the aircraft at some point after it stopped responding to radio calls at 00:25 UTC. But these messages did not explain the cause of the fire, nor did they provide any means with which to determine whether the fire was the cause of the accident, or whether the event that caused the accident also happened to result in a fire. And until that question could be answered, anything was possible.
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In the first 24 hours after the crash, officials in both the US [10] and Egypt [9] openly hypothesized that a bomb might have brought down the aircraft — a theory that was not entirely unfounded. Just under 7 months earlier, ISIS terrorists planted a bomb aboard a Russian airliner departing from Sharm-el-Sheikh, Egypt, claiming 224 lives. Furthermore, flight 804’s sudden disappearance from radar at cruising altitude without a distress call drew comparisons to previous bombings, where such disappearances were caused by the immediate destruction of the aircraft in flight.
However, investigators were already becoming aware of evidence that complicated the assumption that the aircraft exploded at cruising altitude.
Days after the crash, [11] a review of radio data revealed that a signal was received from the aircraft’s Emergency Locator Transmitter (ELT) at 00:36:59 [1:247], just over seven minutes after the plane disappeared from radar screens in Greece and Egypt — leaving a gap that was suspiciously long if one assumed the aircraft had broken up.
The type of ELT fitted to most modern airliners, including the accident aircraft, is designed to transmit an automated distress signal when the device is subjected to a certain level of longitudinal deceleration (in this case, between 2.0 and 2.6 G’s). [1:116] Two G’s of longitudinal deceleration refers to a reduction in forward velocity that causes objects inside the aircraft to jerk forward with an apparent force equal to twice that of earth’s gravity. The level of deceleration required to impart such a force is high enough to represent a relatively reliable indicator that the airplane has crashed. Therefore, it seemed reasonable to assume that the activation of the ELT represented the time at which the aircraft impacted the sea.
However, raw Greek radar data showed that there was more to the story. When a plane disappears from modern air traffic control radar, that only means its transponder has stopped broadcasting — it doesn’t mean that the aircraft isn’t still flying. That’s because ATC radar is what is known as “secondary radar,” which interrogates an aircraft’s transponder in order to receive detailed information about that aircraft’s identity, altitude, airspeed, and more. It’s not what the average person pictures when they imagine a radar dish bouncing radio waves off a solid object in the sky. That type of radar is called primary radar, and it’s no longer used for ATC purposes because it doesn’t provide any useful information about the target, except for its rough location. But it does exist, and it’s usually recorded — and in this case, it captured something surprising. The data showed an object, clearly flight 804, continuing past the point where the transponder was lost, before entering a tightening right-hand spiral that continued until the last radar return was received at 00:38:50 — one minute and 51 seconds after the ELT signal was generated, and nearly nine minutes after the loss of secondary radar contact. [1:151–152]
The fact that the ELT transmitted a distress signal before the plane hit the water was difficult to explain, and the question of how it happened could not be immediately resolved. Some possible reasons will be examined later in this article. But the presence of a single target following a spiral flight path on primary radar clearly showed that the aircraft did not break up at 37,000 feet, but rather continued to fly, or at least fall in one piece, for nine more minutes. Nevertheless, what took place during those nine minutes remained a complete mystery.
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The only way for investigators to understand these scattered scraps of evidence was to find the wreckage, and especially the flight recorders, which were equipped with battery-powered transmitters known as “pingers” that signal the box’s location when submerged in water. Using the location of the ELT signal and the last recorded radar data, BEA investigators identified a search area, and the French vessel Laplace was brought to the scene to locate the pingers. [1:181] Around the first of June, such signals were in fact detected on the seabed — but this discovery only identified the probable wreckage area. [12] Finding and recovering the debris required the services of the specialized search ship John Lethbridge, which arrived in the area only on the 10th of June, equipped with side-scan sonar and a remotely operated deep sea salvage vehicle. [1:181–182] The wreckage field was conclusively identified using sonar on the 14th of June, and early the following morning, a deep sea ROV captured the first footage of the debris, lying scattered on the ocean floor at a crushing depth of 3,000 meters — only 800 meters less than Titanic. [12]
The recovery of the black boxes was swift. The first recorder was found on June 16th, and the other was retrieved the next day, whereupon the devices were rushed to Alexandria. The flight data recorder (FDR), which captured hundreds of aircraft parameters, promised to shed light on the origins of the fire, while the cockpit voice recorder (CVR) would reveal the context in which the fire started, and the response of the crew.
But before either device could be decoded, specialized repairs had to be made to correct impact damage to the memory boards, which threatened to derail the investigation. These delicate repairs couldn’t be made with the available equipment and expertise at the EAAID headquarters in Cairo, so the recorders were shipped to France and restored to working order by the BEA. [1:166, 176] But in the end, despite lingering doubts about the survival of the data, the BEA was able to extract the contents of both recorders, before returning the downloaded information to the EAAID.
Later, after the investigation broke down into acrimony, an anonymous investigator told French newspaper Le Figaro that the Egyptians instructed the BEA to erase all local copies of the black box data. [13] While I couldn’t independently verify these claims, it is true that Egypt possessed wide latitude to control the distribution of these recordings under Annex 13, which specifies that “The State conducting the investigation MAY leave the original recordings, or a copy of them, with the read-out facility until the investigation is completed, in order to facilitate the timely resolution of additional requests or clarifications, providing that the facility has adequate security procedures to safeguard the recordings” (emphasis added). [3:64] Because this provision gives the leading state (in this case, Egypt) discretionary authority to permit another state to keep copies of the recordings, it is implied that the leading state can also withhold such permission without any specific reason. The anonymous source told Le Figaro at the time that the BEA destroyed all of its own copies of the data in order to comply with this provision of Annex 13 [13], but as we’ll see later, that wasn’t actually true. So hold that thought.
In the meantime, representatives of the EAAID, BEA, EgyptAir, Airbus, and other parties to the investigation reviewed the flight data and listened to the cockpit voice recording. We’ll get to the details of what they saw and heard later in this article. But what was publicly released at the time, in one of the last significant investigative updates, was that the CVR confirmed the already suspected outbreak of a fire aboard the aircraft. [14]
Back at the crash site, other discoveries added weight to these findings. The deep-sea ROV was deployed several times to bring wreckage to the surface, ultimately recovering 21 items of interest before its mission came to an end. [1:185] Among these items was one particularly interesting piece of the outer fuselage skin that had once been installed below and behind the right forward passenger door. The skin section, crushed and mangled by the impact forces, showed clear signs of exposure to fire, such as sooting and charring, on its interior side. Similar markings were found on a structural element that once supported the ceiling over the galley entryway area. [1:234–236] The discovery of fire damage in this area was consistent with the ACARS fault messages, which indicated a series of system failures on the right side of the cockpit.
Public speculation about the cause of the fire in the cockpit mostly focused on possible electrical failures or the combustion of a battery-powered device, such as a cell phone. But behind the scenes, another theory was brewing — one that would tear the investigation apart.
From the very beginning, investigators had seriously considered the possibility that flight 804 was brought down by an intentional explosion, despite the fact that no claims of responsibility had been forthcoming. But the speculation about this possibility came mostly from the Egyptian side, from figures like the chairman of EgyptAir [15] and Egypt’s aviation minister [12]. Terrorism had not been officially ruled out, but by the end of the summer, European analysts believed an accidental fire was more likely.
However, on the 16th of September, French newspaper Le Figaro reported that traces of the high explosive TNT had been found on the remains of several crash victims. [13][16] Although some remains were found floating on the surface and others were recovered from underwater, the initial reports did not clarify to which group these remains belonged. But according to Le Figaro’s source, the French investigators wanted to study the remains’ chain of custody in order to rule out potential post-crash contamination — only to find these efforts stymied by the Egyptian judicial authorities. The source close to the investigation further stated that the remains had been packed in bags supplied by Egypt and that the French side didn’t know where the bags came from. It was also alleged that Egypt wanted to draw up a joint Egyptian-French report confirming the presence of TNT but that France had refused. [13]
Despite the lack of French cooperation, Egypt eventually decided to move ahead. On the 15th of December, the EAAID publicly stated that TNT had been found on the victims, while the Civil Aviation Authority announced the opening of a criminal investigation. Furthermore, with a criminal act officially suspected, Egyptian public prosecutors were legally obligated to take over the investigation. Nevertheless, a source close to the French investigation told BBC News that they had doubts about the validity of the explosive traces. [17] With this doubt still lingering, the BEA was likely suspicious of the move to take the investigation out of the hands of the EAAID, which would also stymie their own efforts to assist the Egyptians. Once the investigation is transferred to the law enforcement system, Annex 13 no longer applies, and the involvement of the aircraft’s state of manufacture is no longer protected, effectively freezing France out of the process.
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Part 2: Cold Case
After the investigation was taken out of the hands of the EAAID, Egypt stopped releasing updates on the crash of flight 804. Month after month passed with no word. No suspects were named and no one was arrested. It was as though the door had been slammed shut in the face of the public.
After December 2016, all notable updates on the crash came from European sources. The first noteworthy report surfaced in May 2017, when a source close to the investigation told various media that French forensic experts had searched for explosive traces on the repatriated remains of French nationals, but had found none. These tests were apparently performed in connection with an ongoing manslaughter investigation into the crash by France’s judicial authorities. [18]
The manslaughter investigation was opened shortly after the crash in order to ascertain whether a crime had been committed resulting in the death of French nationals, which is standard procedure in France in the event of an air disaster. But this investigation was also unbound by the principles of Annex 13, and sometime in 2018, this resulted in a spectacular confrontation between the judicial authorities and the BEA. According to French newspaper Le Parisien, the French justice department sought to retrieve the black box data from the Egyptians, but was told that the data was still held by the BEA, despite previous reports that the agency had destroyed all its copies of the data. Under Annex 13, the contents of the flight recorders were the privileged property of Egypt, and the BEA did not believe it had the right to turn over the data to the justice department even if it had a copy. But French law contradicted this, and not only that, the justice department learned that such a copy did in fact exist. Allegedly, a copy was automatically created when the data was downloaded, which the BEA refused to hand over, citing Annex 13. In response, the justice department issued a search warrant, and French air transport gendarmes raided the BEA headquarters in October. [19] When asked for comment, a BEA spokesperson told Le Parisien, “We are complying with international law. It is up to the Egyptians to communicate the elements. And this agreement with the French justice system only works if it is the BEA that directs the investigation into a crash. … When we deciphered the black boxes, the data was handed over to the Egyptians and everything was erased. But we later discovered that an automatic backup had been done. We didn’t know” [19]. Separately, a BEA spokesperson told the Wall Street Journal, “We are not allowed as [the] BEA to release to third parties any information on this safety investigation because we are not leading it. The Egyptian authorities are, and they need to approve that kind of request.” [20]
Although tangential to this story, a police raid on an investigative authority in order to seize crash data is completely unprecedented to my knowledge, and raises questions about the way international investigations are handled. The BEA probably saw itself as bound by an international treaty under which it had no authority over the flight recorders, while simultaneously bound by French domestic laws that did not protect it from being subpoenaed. If the BEA was aware it possessed a copy of the data, then it was stuck between a rock and a hard place. But the full story of how the BEA came into possession of the flight data backup and how it handled the resulting conflict with the justice department has not been publicly revealed.
For another three years, the manslaughter investigation dragged on, until in 2022 a dossier was submitted to the Paris Court of Appeals containing further conclusions. This dossier was seen by Italian newspaper Corriere della Sera, which published an article summarizing the findings. Much of the article’s contents had not previously been made public. I won’t go into the details here, but in broad strokes it stated that an oxygen mask was leaking oxygen in the cockpit, possibly due to an incorrect setting, and the leak may have been ignited when one of the pilots lit a cigarette. The report alleged that EgyptAir pilots smoked so regularly that the airline recently had to replace the cockpit ashtrays. However, the original article didn’t point to specific evidence that the accident pilots were smoking at the time of the fire, a fact that was lost in some second-hand reporting. [21]
The article in Corriere della Sera received quite a lot of attention in the aviation community and even led to the filming of a documentary on the crash for the long-running TV series Air Crash Investigation (also known as Mayday), in which experts debated the theory put forward by the article and called for further investigation. However, the consensus among industry watchers by that time was that a definitive report was unlikely to be published as long as Egypt refused to cooperate. In a chatlog dated October 2022, I myself said, “Maybe one day there will be a regime change in Egypt, and then ten years later the investigative authority [will] quietly upload a ton of old reports on some random Wednesday.”
It has to be said that by 2022, with over 6 years having passed since the crash, the normal timeframe for completion of an accident report had long since come and gone. The average report is completed in one to two years; sometimes three; occasionally four. By the time six years had passed, experts were starting to get agitated — and angry. If the fragments of evidence about a cockpit fire were true, then it was possible that there was some vulnerability in the design of the Airbus A320, which is on track to become the best-selling passenger jet of all time. As a result, in October 2022, analysts Nicholas Butcher and John Cox with the Royal Aeronautical Society published an article calling on Egyptian authorities to release an accident report, writing that “Six years of not knowing the circumstances surrounding the loss of one of these widely used Airbus aircraft is simply unacceptable.” [22] This call was echoed by others.
In their article, Butcher and Cox also included a telling line: “It is understood that the French BEA have attempted to persuade the Egyptian authorities to publish an accident report without success.” [22] Although the claim was unverifiable at the time, it is now known that the BEA was indeed pressuring the Egyptians behind the scenes to continue the investigation. However, the EAAID indicated that the matter was out of its hands. [5:502]. Apparently concerned that the case would remain frozen as long as the ball was in Egypt’s court, the BEA took the extraordinary step of organizing a completely independent testing and analysis regime in order to elucidate the causes and propagation methods of the fire, using only the evidence Egypt had already given them. These tests were conducted throughout 2023 and the results were submitted to the EAAID in October of that year. [23:659]
Sometime prior to July 2024, a decision must have been taken within the Egyptian government to allow the EAAID to publish a final report, because the BEA was able to view a draft report, and its comments on that report were submitted on the 31st of July 2024. [23:643] The EAAID’s response to those comments apparently prompted the BEA to submit a revised version of its October 2023 submission, which was received by the EAAID on the 24th of October, 2024. Six days later, with no prior announcement, the EAAID released its final report with the French report appended — and just like that, the story of EgyptAir flight 804 was released from its frozen stupor, nearly eight and a half years after the A320 plunged into the Mediterranean.
Unfortunately, the BEA and the EAAID didn’t come to an agreement about the cause of the crash. In fact, their reports could hardly be more different. The Egyptian report concludes that the aircraft was brought down by an intentional explosion in the galley, while the French submission argues for the accidental ignition of a component within the first officer’s oxygen mask stowage box, resulting in an unstoppable fire. This divided result is likely to sow confusion and confound interested parties, especially those who lack any specialized knowledge of aviation. But, much like my previous study of Arrow Air flight 1285, reading both reports and comparing them to investigative best practices has revealed that only one holds up under scrutiny.
What follows in Part 3 is a point-by-point analysis of the Egyptian findings. I engaged in consultations with professionals in the field prior to writing this section, but for legal reasons those people will remain nameless and all opinions put forward hereafter should be considered my own except where otherwise indicated.
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Part 3: Explosive Evidence
The crash of EgyptAir flight 804 took place against a background in which Egyptian aviation was under explicit and implicit threat from various groups and individuals, including but not limited to the Islamic State, whose operatives were active in Egypt’s Sinai peninsula. In addition to the Russian airliner that was destroyed by a bomb over the Sinai in October 2015, an EgyptAir flight on March 29th, 2016 was hijacked by a man wearing a fake explosive vest, who forced it to divert to Cyprus. [24] No one was killed or injured in the incident, but the hijacking less than two months before the crash may have been why there were three security officers aboard flight 804. Nevertheless, no specific threats had been lodged against the accident flight, and there was no indication that there was anything abnormal about any of the passengers or crew. It should however be noted that identifying possible perpetrators was not part of the EAAID’s mandate, and the report contains no discussion of suspects, motives, or methods.
After departing Charles de Gaulle Airport at 21:21 UTC, flight 804 climbed normally to its cruising altitude of 37,000 feet, or flight level 370, and proceeded southeast in the general direction of Greece. The cockpit voice recording began as the aircraft was cruising over the Adriatic coast about two hours before the accident, capturing mainly personal conversations between the pilots. [2] Light music was playing in the background. [2:440]. The First Officer, 25-year-old Mohamed Assem, was the pilot flying; 36-year-old Captain Mohamed Shokair was monitoring the instruments. [25][1:23,26][5:583] At around 00:04, Captain Shokair apparently received lasagna and asked for a toothpick, after which the conversation died away. For several minutes the cockpit voice recorder captured only the steady chatter of other aircraft communicating on the Athens radio frequency. At around 00:21, Captain Shokair asked a flight attendant for a blanket and pillow because he was feeling cold, and the flight attendant returned with those items at 00:23. First Officer Assem then proposed that she sit in the observer seat, and she assented. The CVR captured the sound of the folding cockpit observer seat being deployed, but no further conversation took place. [2]
Moments later, at time 00:25 and 24 seconds, the EAAID believes an explosive device detonated in the forward galley.
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Before we dive into the EAAID’s basis for this scenario, it’s helpful to briefly examine some of the methods that investigators normally use to identify a high explosive detonation aboard an aircraft.
To start us off, I retrieved a copy of a 1973 US Air Force document entitled “Fire and Explosion Manual for Aircraft Accident Investigators.” Investigators today certainly have access to more up-to-date manuals, but this is what was publicly available, and the basic theory hasn’t changed that much anyway.
In broad terms, the manual states, “In the fire or explosion analysis, it is necessary to account for the source of the combustible, the probable source of ignition, the history of the fire, and the observed fire damage. Any assumptions that are made must be reasonably consistent with the evidence on system malfunctions, material failures, and the sequence of events” [26:5]. Hopefully all of this goes without saying. Next, the manual reads, “The origin of the fire is deduced from a combination of the evidence developed in determining the sources of ignition and combustible [material] and the material failures or system malfunctions” [26:7]. And lastly I want to highlight the following line: “Damage from explosions is usually indicated by the rupture of an aircraft compartment and the dispersal of fragments” [26:8].
Next, I examined two famous aircraft bombings — Pan Am flight 103 and Air India flight 182 — in order to analyze the types of evidence that were used by accident investigators to prove the detonation of a high explosive.
The British AAIB report on the bombing of Pan Am flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland in 1988 is almost entirely dedicated to analyzing the breakup pattern of the aircraft in order to establish the origin and nature of the initiating event. In that case, investigators scoured the Scottish countryside to retrieve as much wreckage as possible and reassembled it in order to more easily identify damage patterns. Consequently, investigators were able to identify a so-called “shatter zone” where the fuselage fragments were reduced to a very small size or were not found. Surrounding this area was a “starburst pattern” of larger skin sections that were torn away and curled outward, while their interior faces were pitted and soot-covered. [27:19] The report also described the recovery of numerous fragments of a forward baggage compartment that all showed evidence of close proximity to an explosive detonation [27:22], as well as extensive discussion of how the explosion-induced fractures propagated through the aircraft. [27:25].
In the case of Air India flight 182, the investigation report produced by the High Court of Delhi includes detailed descriptions of various explosive signatures, including numerous small punch-through holes in the fuselage skin with high-energy impact characteristics [28:106]; small pieces of metal curled in upon themselves by more than 360 degrees [28:107]; a large number of tiny fragments trapped inside larger pieces of wreckage [28:108]; greatly different damage in the forward cargo hold vs the aft [28:170]; distinct metallurgical markers on the fracture surfaces, with photographs [28:100, 171]; replication of damage patterns during experimental explosions [28:110–111]; and circumstantial evidence, including a suspicious person who asked for his baggage to be forwarded on Air India flight 182 without boarding the aircraft himself; and the explosion of another bomb originating from the same airport on the same day, in a bag associated with a reservation made by the same person who failed to board flight 182 [28:160–163]. It should be noted that the Air India report contains discussion of the perpetrators, while the Pan Am report does not, because Air India flight 182 was investigated by a court inquiry, whereas Pan Am flight 103 was subject to separate safety and criminal investigations, of which only the former is cited here.
The Air India report also includes testimony from an expert who had reviewed numerous aircraft explosions between 1946 and 1985. According to this expert, the most reliable indication of an explosion is “cratering” of nearby metals, consisting of “minute and numerous” indentations, “often in groups.” “Fusing of metal, scorching, pitting, and blast effect” were cited as good indicators, while “curling, corkscrewing, and sawtooth edges” could be explosive indicators in conjunction but are not always adequate proof by themselves. [28:111–112] Regarding curling of metal, the expert added, “Curling petals … may be observed in other events than explosions…. It is probable that these features indicate a rapid rate of failure but not necessarily of a rapidity which could only be produced by an explosion” [28:108].
Keeping all this in mind, let’s consider the arguments used by the EAAID to support its hypothesis that an explosive device detonated on flight 804.
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The development of the bomb hypothesis appears to have begun with the recovery of the victims’ remains, which was conducted in three stages dated 22 May, 25 June, and 4 July. Bizarrely, the EAAID included an annex containing a detailed and often morbid description of each shred of human tissue that was recovered [29:465], which is certainly not standard procedure in an investigation report. The annex also describes “strange plastic or metallic parts” embedded in some of the remains, although as far as I am aware this is normal in a high speed aircraft crash. The aircraft and its occupants were both torn to shreds and mixed together; physics does not discriminate.
According to the report, French and Egyptian experts analyzed the first group of remains aboard the John Lethbridge and then transferred 23 of them to Cairo, where six tested positive for TNT and other compounds associated with a TNT explosion. These remains were found at the crash site within 3 days of the accident, which means they were floating on the ocean surface. Subsequently, the report states that additional remains from the 25 June group were examined; some of these remains showed evidence of burning, which must have taken place in flight. [29:484–485] The report doesn’t say how many of these tested positive for TNT, but it does say that a total of 23 samples belonging to 18 individuals showed traces of the explosive, and the remains from the 4 July group weren’t tested. [1:269]
The aforementioned annex contains a table showing which samples belonged to which individual, along with which ones tested positive. Horrifyingly, the copy of the report originally submitted to the BEA for comment didn’t redact the names of the victims from this table, which is a massive breach of confidentiality that the experts I spoke with agree amounts to malpractice. Fortunately, the EAAID redacted the names before publishing the report, but only because the BEA told them to. [29:486–493][23:659]
In any case, these data appear to support one of the purported findings of the French judicial report from 2019; namely, that some of the TNT traces were on remains that should have been underwater long enough to dissolve any residue. The 25 June group of remains was recovered from the sea floor more than a month after the crash, but according to the Federal Aviation Administration, explosive residues should dissolve after only 2 days of total immersion in seawater. [30] Considering this fact, there is good reason to doubt that the TNT traces originated from an explosion on board the aircraft. Cases of cross-contamination after recovery have occurred in the past, and French investigators appear correct to be skeptical of the findings.
In its report, the EAAID reveals some previously unreported or underreported details about what happened to the investigation after it was handed over to the judicial authorities, which may explain how these findings were accepted uncritically.
Following the forensic medicine authority’s discovery of TNT traces, the Egyptian public prosecutor’s office assigned the investigation to a so-called “Triple Committee” consisting of a forensic evidence expert, an aviation expert, and a forensic medicine expert. This committee confirmed that several pieces of wreckage from the forward right side of the aircraft had been subjected to fire and smoke, but all the items tested negative for explosive residue. The committee’s report indicates that this could be because the parts had been under the sea for too long, causing the residue to dissolve. [1:217] However, it has to be noted that these parts were recovered at around the same time as the June 25 group of human remains [1:185], and the report doesn’t address why the human remains would still contain explosive traces while the wreckage did not.
We’ll come back to the rest of the Triple Committee report in a moment, but first I want to wrap up the discussion of explosive residues. Throughout the Egyptian report, there are dozens of references to TNT and traces of explosives, and the presence of these traces appears to be central to the EAAID’s findings. But this stands in stark contrast to the reports on Air India flight 182 and Pan Am flight 103, each of which contains only one reference explosive residue. In the Air India report, an expert providing testimony makes an offhand reference to sending a component for chemical analysis [28:107–108], and the presence or absence of explosive residue was not used in formulating the analysis or conclusions. [28:158–171] Similarly, the only reference to explosive residue in the Lockerbie report is an offhand mention in a paragraph describing how the interior faces of the fuselage panels near the bomb were hit by a “cloud of shrapnel, unburnt explosive residues, and sooty combustion products.” [27:46] Furthermore, the 1973 Air Force investigation manual makes no reference to chemical analysis of residues as a technique for identifying an explosive detonation aboard an aircraft. However, this could be because the manual was intended for military investigations involving aircraft that are often carrying ordnance as part of their normal cargo.
Lastly, it must be mentioned that the EAAID report contains, on page 270, a chart showing the seating locations of the passengers and crew whose remains tested positive for TNT (shown above). But rather than being concentrated near the area where the explosion allegedly took place, at the front of the cabin, these individuals are scattered throughout the aircraft with no apparent pattern. Furthermore, those occupants seated nearest to the alleged blast site did not test positive. [1:270] It’s possible that these passengers’ remains were all recovered in the 4 July group, which was not tested for explosives, but this is improbable. The report does not explain why the distribution was seemingly random.
Overall, it appears that the presence of explosive residue is not normally used to prove that an explosive device detonated aboard an aircraft, and my impression is that it was inappropriate as a starting point. In both previous bombings discussed in this article, testing of residue was presumably undertaken by police investigators in order to identify the type of explosives involved, for purposes of finding the perpetrators, but it was not used by the safety investigations to determine the cause of either crash. In its comments on the report, the BEA also criticized the centrality of explosive residue to the Egyptian argument, writing that “The French experts involved indicated that the results obtained do not allow for a definitive conclusion regarding the presence of TNT. However, the presence of TNT is never questioned and is taken as an assumption or even as a starting point in all scenario analyses” [23:656]. I would also add that the report contains no evidence suggesting that the Egyptian investigators undertook any effort to rule out post-crash contamination of the samples as a possible reason for the findings.
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Of course, even if there’s reason to doubt the validity of the TNT traces, that doesn’t automatically mean that the plane wasn’t brought down by a bomb. Therefore, we need to examine some of the other arguments Egypt used to support its conclusions. And that brings us, first of all, back to the Triple Committee report.
The report submitted by the Triple Committee contained a number of findings relating to an explosion aboard the aircraft, including what it described as a “disruption” in the forward galley area, and “indications of mechanical loads and heat effects which might be a result of explosive material on five parts of the wreckage” [1:217]. The five pieces of wreckage cited here were a part of the fuselage frame above the forward passenger doors; a piece of fuselage skin from the lower right side of the cockpit; the previously mentioned piece of fuselage skin from below and behind the right forward passenger door; part of the right forward passenger door itself; and some mangled catering trolleys. [1:217] Although the aircraft didn’t break up in flight, the Triple Committee and the EAAID clearly believed that these portions of the fuselage were heavily damaged by the initial explosion, even as the aircraft remained substantially intact.
The EAAID report includes some basic analysis of all of these items. For instance, the catering trolley was found badly deformed, almost unrecognizable, having been turned inside out and flattened. Regarding this part, the report states, “The trolley tray tracks were so worn out probably due to gas wash,” without explanation. [1:233] Gas wash can be a side effect of an explosion as hot combustion gases change the appearance and properties of metal. However, the report doesn’t provide any evidence, such as photographs or surface analysis, that clearly demonstrate gas wash; nor does it explain what “worn out” means. Instead, the report says, “Two sides of two trolleys together with a part of galley composite wall stuck within (This feature is known only to result of the venting of high pressure gases and rolling over the sharp fractured edge in a direction away from the venting gases)” [1:238]. I had some difficulty understanding what was meant by this line, largely due to bad grammar, but in general terms it appears to be suggesting that the trolleys could only have been turned inside out by the pressure generated by an explosion. It is unclear how or why the EAAID ruled out impact forces as the cause of this deformation. Furthermore, in terms of reasoning for this conclusion, the report basically just says “it is known,” as though it’s common knowledge that only the venting of high pressure gases can turn a catering trolley inside out and wrap it around a piece of the galley wall. Needless to say, this is an assertion requiring proof or at least a source, but neither is provided.
The next part discussed in the report is the section of frame from the fuselage crown above the forward entryway area, which the EAAID notes as being “deflected backwards” with a “change in the original metal color” at both ends. From photographs it’s apparent that this part was severely dented with evidence of sooting in some locations. [1:234] The report attributes the deformation of this part to an “overpressure” event [1:238], but doesn’t explain why this damage couldn’t have been caused by the impact with the sea. I am not trained in wreckage examination but I would assume that a rearward deflection of the crown frame is normal in a nose-first impact, and the report failed to convince me otherwise.
The third piece of wreckage mentioned in this part of the report is the upper third of the right-hand forward passenger door, which was completely torn away from the bottom two thirds. This part displayed what the EAAID calls “outward buckling,” as well as possible sooting on the interior face. The report cites all of these aspects of the door’s condition as evidence that it was exposed to an explosion, but once again fails to explain why this damage was not caused by an in-flight fire followed by a high-speed impact.
The fourth part given special scrutiny is a section of fuselage skin located near the first officer’s seat. The report repeatedly highlights the existence of intact wiring attached to this part that didn’t appear to have been affected by fire or heat [1:235], but more detailed photographs of this part in one of the report’s annexes tell a different story. Two photos of this piece of wreckage, identified in the report as part №31, show significant sooting and charring on the interior face, apparent even to the untrained observer. [31:454] An expert with whom I shared the photos agreed that they represented clear evidence of fire and/or heat damage. The BEA also agreed with this assessment, listing part no. 31 as an item displaying traces of soot and heat exposure in its comments on the Egyptian report.
In its response to those comments, the EAAID admits that there is soot on part №31. And while the EAAID doesn’t try to explain the presence of soot on part №31 in its report, its response to the BEA comments does argue that some fire and smoke could have spread forward to this area after the explosion, but that the fire could not have started in this area because nearby wiring was undamaged. The BEA wrote in its comments that this argument was “false and misleading” because the wires in question were located below the cockpit floor level, while the fire damage was above the floor level. In the event that the fire started in the right side of the cockpit, this would have insulated the wires from the flames and heat, which tend to spread upward, not downward. [23:645].
Lastly, the report discusses another piece of fuselage skin, designated item №37, which was once located below and just behind the right forward passenger door. The interior face of this part was stained with soot and its edges were torn and curled. [1:236] Using the same terminology employed by the Pan Am 103 report, the EAAID wrote that items 31 and 37 together formed a “starburst fracture” pattern in the right forward side of the fuselage. [1:280] However, the report doesn’t indicate that any pieces of the right forward fuselage were recovered other than these two, only one of which shows any signs of peeling or curling. It’s unclear how this paltry evidence is supposed to represent a starburst fracture pattern. Two data points doth not a pattern make.
In summary, Egypt’s attempts to use the wreckage in support of the explosion hypothesis are hindered by the fact that almost all of the debris is still lying on the bottom of the Mediterranean. The report states that only eight pieces of recovered wreckage showed signs of exposure to fire or heat, which is an abysmally low number given that a fire is known to have taken place. [1:232] Furthermore, most of these were pieces of passenger seats, portable items, and luggage. [1:186–189] Given that parts ranging from as far forward as the cockpit and as far back as the cabin all show signs of exposure to fire, the total number of charred, sooted, burnt and heat-affected parts should be much higher than eight, but most were not brought to the surface, and those that were salvaged were all peripheral to the suspected seat of the fire.
Without recovering the majority of the aircraft, it wasn’t possible to undertake a detailed reconstruction of the airframe and analyze the damage patterns. And without this powerful investigative tool, the EAAID failed to demonstrate the validity of its claims about the observed damage.
Unfortunately, even with current technology, it’s extremely expensive to recover wreckage from under 3,000 meters of water, and there’s little precedent for recovering an entire aircraft from such depth. It’s not my place to say whether more thorough efforts could have been undertaken. But it is clear that a mere 21 items from the ocean floor [1:185] and approximately 300 floating fragments [1:186], mostly cabin furnishings, were insufficient to mount a compelling wreckage-based case about the cause of the crash.
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All of this having been said, we have not exhausted the arguments used by the EAAID to make its case. Each point must be considered.
Throughout its report, the EAAID sought to disprove the French claim that the fire started in the cockpit. It was self-evident that a fire had taken place, but if Egypt was to argue that a bomb explosion started the fire, it would defy both the available evidence and common sense to claim that the bomb was placed in the cockpit. Furthermore, on the basis of the damage to nearby fuselage fragments, structural elements, and galley contents, the Triple Committee report concluded that the bomb was placed in the forward galley, probably due to a passenger slipping the device into a catering trolley during the cabin meal service. The device then exploded, starting a fire. [1:272–273] The EAAID then attempted to expand upon this argument by presenting other items of evidence suggesting that the fire started behind the cockpit, rather than in it.
One of the EAAID’s most favored arguments was the timing of the lavatory smoke alarm vis-à-vis the avionics smoke alarm. According to both the ACARS messages and the flight data recorder, the lavatory smoke alarm sounded first, followed by the avionics smoke 46 seconds later. [1:225] The report states that most lavatory ventilation air comes from the cabin, where it’s drawn into the lavatories through grilles in the door by means of an extraction fan in the ceiling. [1:104] In contrast, the avionics bay, located beneath the cockpit, receives cooling airflow via vents in the cockpit floor. [1:258] Therefore, the EAAID wrote, airflow patterns should cause the avionics smoke alarm to trigger before the lavatory smoke alarm if the source of the smoke was inside the cockpit. [1:5] This argument was repeated numerous times throughout the report, but it was essentially stated as a given or accepted fact. The report doesn’t mention any sort of airflow study or other testing that would prove which smoke alarm should trigger first. So while it’s very plausible that a fire in the cockpit would generate avionics smoke before lavatory smoke, it’s also possible to envision a scenario in which a fire breaks out in the cockpit, someone opens the cockpit door, and smoke billows out into the galley and lavatory area before it has time to flow down into the avionics compartment. Furthermore, smoke tends to rise to the ceiling before backfilling down toward the floor, possibly delaying its entry into the avionics bay. So which is it?
The fact is that either scenario could be proven or disproven by placing a smoke machine in various locations inside a parked aircraft with the ventilation system turned on. However, the report contains no indication that the EAAID did so before assuming that the order of the smoke alarms was significant. In its comments on the report, the BEA also highlighted this problem, writing, “Although this sequence of alerts might suggest that the fire started in the cabin, this fact taken in isolation cannot be conclusive…. A fire in the cockpit could also have led to this sequence” [23:648–649]. So while it isn’t inappropriate to say that the order of the smoke alarms is consistent with a preferred scenario, it can’t be considered evidence for that scenario unless tests are conducted.
Although the above argument was the most widely used throughout the report, some others were also employed. For example, the EAAID pointed out only 44 seconds passed between the flight crew’s first shouts of “fire” and the activation of the lavatory smoke alarm, which is not a lot of time for a fire to grow large enough to spread smoke to the lavatories. [1:5] However, once again, it’s possible to envision a scenario in which a rapidly spreading fire in the cockpit generates enough smoke to activate the lavatory smoke alarm in 44 seconds. Such a fire would probably need to be very aggressive, but as it happens, that’s exactly the type of fire that the BEA believes took place.
Similarly, the EAAID points out that all of the failed computers and systems listed in the ACARS messages and FDR data possessed power supply wiring that ran through a panel in the aft right part of the cockpit, called the 120VU electrical panel. This panel is quite close to the catering trolley stowage area in the galley, located on the other side of the cockpit rear wall. As such, the failure of these systems is consistent with damage in that part of the aircraft. [1:288] It is not, however, proof that the fire did or did not start in the cockpit.
The EAAID also acknowledges that the pilots shouted “fire” within seconds of the estimated time of the explosion, before there should have been any fire visible in the cockpit. However, the report explains that the pilots therefore must have seen the fire on the video feed from the anti-hijack camera, which provides a view of the area just outside the cockpit door for five minutes after any request to enter the cockpit. Since a flight attendant had entered the cockpit less than five minutes before the emergency, this camera would have been active and would have showed flames in the galley. [1:285] This is an explanation for the pilots’ behavior under the proposed scenario, but much like the last several arguments, it doesn’t constitute proof of that scenario.
Additionally, the EAAID argues that because there was no attempt by the cabin crew to alert the pilots to a fire in the galley or cabin, that must mean that the flight attendants were incapacitated by the explosion and fire. [1:288] However, as in all the arguments above, this could also mean that the fire wasn’t in the cabin in the first place.
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There was also one other significant topic of discussion in the EAAID report, which was the possibility that an oxygen leak accelerated the fire. However, any detailed examination of the behavior of the crew oxygen system during the accident requires a technical deep-dive that I’m going to save for Part 4 of this article, which is coming up shortly. The Egyptian comments on this system are mostly comprehensible only in the context of the French findings, which is why I’m going to talk about those first. For now it suffices to say that the oxygen system had to be addressed because the first abnormal sound on the cockpit voice recording was actually a hissing sound, which the EAAID acknowledged to be consistent with the sound of oxygen escaping from the first officer’s oxygen mask. [1:227, 210] This sound continued for several minutes before dying away.
The Triple Committee report addressed this issue by arguing that the explosion in the galley disrupted the underfloor pipe that carries oxygen from the crew oxygen supply to the oxygen masks in the cockpit. However, in support of this argument, the Triple Committee claimed that the leaking sound was most prominent on the CVR channel for the third occupant at the rear of the cockpit [1:272], which is contrary to the facts as established by both the EAAID [1:210] and the BEA [5:537].
Summarizing the Triple Committee report, the EAAID wrote, “This resulted in oxygen leakage and fire in the cockpit due to the presence of a heat source resulting from the explosion, flammable material and the oxygen” [1:217–218]. However, it’s unclear to me why this argument is used when the EAAID report spends considerable time attempting to rebut the notion that there was a fire in the cockpit at all. Furthermore, the oxygen pipeline is entirely within the area under the cockpit and doesn’t extend under the galley. [1:59–60]
At the same time, in direct opposition to the findings of the Triple Committee report, the EAAID argues that there was no oxygen leak at all, because if there was, then the cylinder would have emptied faster than it actually did. [1:283] No evidence for this claim is provided.
The report also argues that even if there was an oxygen leak, this would not cause a fire without an ignition source, which is true. [1:260] Oxygen simply reduces the amount of heat required to ignite a fuel source. But in the EAAID’s opinion, there was no plausible ignition source other than the bomb explosion in the galley. The report points out that the manufacturers of aircraft oxygen systems are required to demonstrate that any mechanical failure or combination of failures resulting in an oxygen-enhanced fire would be “extremely improbable.” In the Egyptians’ view, this was sufficient reason to exclude an accidental ignition source in the absence of specific evidence for a particular failure. On the other hand, they argued, a heat source could be deliberately introduced, and then all bets would be off. [1:261] In its comments, however, the BEA cautioned that because the probability of a fault is never zero, the EAAID should have written that they had no evidence of a failure, rather than arguing that a failure could not have occurred. [23:655]
Finally, in their concluding section, the EAAID stated that the blast wave from the explosion “affected” the first officer’s oxygen mask stowage box, disrupting the box and causing oxygen to flow from the mask. [1:287] However, this claim raises more questions than it answers. The proposed scenario makes no mention of a leak in the oxygen system under the floor near the galley, even though a leak in that location was discussed multiple times throughout the report. And if the explosion did breach an oxygen line under the floor, why would oxygen flow from the mask? Even worse, the scenario also claims that the oxygen leak accelerated the fire, but how did the leaking mask ignite if the fire was outside the cockpit, as the EAAID always maintained? This conclusion just doesn’t make any sense.
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As we will soon see, there are many more dimensions to the oxygen system debate than what has been presented here so far. But before we get there, it’s time to talk about two of the biggest problems with the Egyptian report — problems not with what the EAAID wrote, but with what they didn’t.
You might be wondering by now whether the cockpit voice recorder captured the sound of the alleged explosion, and I’ll cut straight to the chase: it did not. There is no sound on the CVR transcript that resembles an explosion, nor is there any sound that the EAAID even attempts to construe as one. [2:439] This issue simply goes unaddressed throughout the entire 292-page Egyptian submission.
In its comments on the report, the BEA notes that in previous cases of in-flight explosions, the sound was always clearly captured and the audio waveforms contained common elements. However, “[The] EAAID did not provide any evidence or analysis of the noises heard on the CVR consistent with an explosive material explosion,” the BEA wrote. “This absence should be mentioned in the report” [23:653]. In response, the EAAID simply wrote that every CVR is unique and that there’s no point comparing it to previous recordings. [23:653] This seems to me very shortsighted and is contrary to my understanding of how investigations are conducted. It also fails to address the question of why a bomb going off in the galley left no sound on the CVR.
The second, equally significant issue is the lack of evidence that the fuselage was disrupted at any point prior to the end of the black box recordings. The EAAID uses bent and twisted fuselage skin panels and doors to support its argument for an explosion in the galley, but this should have resulted in an explosive decompression of the aircraft. If the plane lost pressurization, that should have triggered a cabin altitude warning, which produces a distinctive and continuous sound in the cockpit whenever the cabin pressure is too low. However, no such sound was heard, even though the CVR continued to record for four and a half minutes after the purported time of the explosion. [2] The primary radar data also does not depict any radar-reflective objects departing the aircraft in flight [1:152], nor is the radar data consistent with a structural breakup of the aircraft at any point prior to the last primary radar return, over 13 minutes after the supposed explosion.
In fact, the EAAID incidentally acknowledges that the aircraft was still pressurized during its attempt to rebut the cockpit oxygen fire argument. On page 238, the report states that a previous cockpit oxygen fire involving a parked aircraft was dissimilar to flight 804 because the fire in that case breached the fuselage in under two minutes, which would have triggered a cabin altitude warning had it occurred on flight 804. [1:238] The EAAID fails to address or correct the glaring discrepancy between this argument and its separate argument that fuselage skin panels were disrupted by an explosion.
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Taken in total, then, what does this leave us with? The traces of TNT on the remains are unreliable, the structural analysis is farcical, there was no sound of an explosion, and the plane didn’t depressurize. It doesn’t look like a duck, talk like a duck, or walk like a duck, and yet the EAAID proclaims, “Duck.” Never before have I seen an accident report that so plainly lost the plot. One of the experts I spoke to said it was the worst report they had ever read. The BEA seemed to agree, writing in its comments that, “The factual accuracy of the report is questionable, and the reasoning for the scenarios appears to distort the facts. … This leads to an unrealistic scenario incompatible with the sequence of warnings, failures and crew announcements” [23:656].
In my opinion, the problem with the report is that it appears to treat the findings of the Triple Committee — the group appointed by the public prosecutor’s office — as the unquestioned truth, and fails to push back on any of its assertions, even the ones that they disagreed with. Instead, because the Triple Committee concluded that a bomb in the galley was the cause of the crash, the EAAID bent itself into a pretzel trying to make the evidence fit that theory.
Unfortunately, we don’t know why the Triple Committee and the EAAID chose to die on this hill. Egypt’s government is not transparent and lacks accountability, creating a vacuum of trust. Various speculative motives for attempting to cover up the cause of the crash have been put forward, which I won’t enumerate here. However, intentional or not, this is the first time I have ever come away from an aircraft accident report believing that a coverup might have taken place.
And yet, if it was a coverup, then the EAAID gave away its own game by attaching the BEA’s comprehensive findings. However, the available evidence suggests they might have had no choice. According to the BEA’s summary of events, prior to publication the French side conveyed its intention to release the BEA study, which may have been what prompted the EAAID to reopen the investigation and publish a report [5:507]. The implication is that the EAAID knew the BEA report would be released either way and decided that publishing the study as an attachment to an official EAAID report would prevent the French narrative from becoming the only narrative. Of course, that still leaves the question of why the EAAID opposed the French narrative in the first place. I would like to believe that the EAAID is made up of professionals who understand the principles of air crash investigation and wrote their own shambolic report under duress. But I wouldn’t stake my life on it. One can never completely rule out the possibility that they just didn’t know what they were doing.
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Part 4: Inferno
When the BEA decided to conduct its own analysis of the fire aboard flight 804 in late 2022 or early 2023, the investigators would have known that they were being tasked with finding the cause of an accident over which they had no jurisdiction. The BEA had no authority to gather evidence from any Egyptian entity or from the crash site; no ability to re-examine the recovered wreckage in person; and no opportunity to access maintenance records, view historical ACARS data, or conduct personnel interviews. All they had was what Egypt had given them before the two sides stopped cooperating. That included photographs of the wreckage, the technical logbook, and of course, the all-important automatic backup of the black box data. Besides these items, the BEA also had access to expertise at Airbus and the oxygen system manufacturer, which were both based in Europe. Using this information, the BEA set out to determine where the fire started, and why.
The BEA began its analysis from the most logical starting point — that is, from the first abnormal noise on the cockpit voice recording. Prior to the hissing sound at time 00:25:24, there was no indication that anything was wrong on board the aircraft. A sick passenger had prompted extensive conversations with the cabin crew earlier in the flight, but it appeared that by the time of the event, this matter had been resolved. [5:534–535] Otherwise, there was no indication that the hissing noise was not the start of the accident sequence.
As stated earlier, investigators determined that this hissing noise was the sound of oxygen escaping from an oxygen mask. So before we explain why this happened and what it meant, we need to examine how the A320’s crew oxygen system works.
The oxygen system on any aircraft exists to supply the passengers and crew with breathable oxygen in the event of a depressurization. Passengers are quite familiar with the oxygen masks that drop down from the ceiling in the cabin, but these masks supply oxygen for less than 15 minutes — plenty of time to descend to an altitude where the air is breathable, but not a whole lot more. By contrast, the pilots have an independent supply cylinder, located under the left side of the cockpit on the A320 [1:58], that provides at least two hours of oxygen depending on the configuration and number of crewmembers [32]. Oxygen is delivered from the cylinder via a rigid pipeline to a distribution manifold, which connects to four oxygen mask stowage boxes — one for each pilot, one for the jumpseat occupant, and one extra. The boxes are located next to each seat. Inside each stowage box a flexible hose connects to the full-face oxygen mask, and a valve prevents oxygen from flowing into the flexible hose when the mask is not active. [1:59]
Certification requirements state that every flight crew oxygen mask “[must be] so designed that it can be rapidly placed on [the pilot’s] face from its ready position, properly secured, sealed, and supplying oxygen upon demand…” [32]. As such, the masks can be donned using one simple and continuous motion. After opening the cover over the stowage box, the pilot simply grabs the mask by the red handle (shown below), lifts it out through the clamshell box doors, and places it on their face. Oxygen will flow automatically because the motion of the left-hand box door sends an electrical signal to open the valve. [1:60] The motion of the valve also completes a circuit that activates the oxygen mask’s built-in microphone, which transmits audio to each pilot’s loudspeaker, allowing the crewmembers to communicate while wearing the masks. [5:523][1:123]
Each oxygen mask can be configured to provide oxygen in one of three different ways. Using the regulator switch, the pilot can select either “normal” or “100%.” “Normal” means that oxygen is mixed with the ambient air, while “100%” supplies pure oxygen. Additionally, there is an emergency knob that can be set to either “normal” or “emergency.” When set to “normal,” oxygen is supplied on-demand whenever the pilot breathes in, while “emergency” causes oxygen to be supplied continuously at a positive pressure of 5 bars. This can be useful in a smoke emergency because it prevents fumes from entering the mask by creating a positive pressure gradient between the interior and exterior of the mask. [5:524] However, it will cause the oxygen supply to be expended more quickly.
The mask also has two other features designed to help test its functionality. The first of these is the “press to test/reset” button on the box, which opens the valve while depressed. Pressing this button also resets the valve to the closed position after the mask is returned to the box following use. [5:523] When this button is depressed, the mask is in an on-demand configuration, but positive oxygen flow can also be generated at pressure by simultaneously pushing the emergency knob inward. This will cause an audible hissing noise as oxygen escapes from the mask. [5:524] In either case, when oxygen is moving through the valve, a yellow blinker illuminates on the box.
Pre-flight check procedures require the pilots to verify that their oxygen masks are functioning properly. The checklist for that procedure on the A320 is as follows:
· Check the CREW OXY SUPPLY pushbutton on the control panel to verify that the oxygen system is turned on.
· Check that the loudspeakers are turned on.
· Hold down the press to test button. This will open the valve, momentarily illuminating the yellow blinker as the pressure equalizes upstream and downstream of the valve, but the blinker should then turn off again.
· With the press to test button still depressed, press down on the emergency knob. This will cause oxygen to flow through valve at a positive pressure of 5 bars, illuminating the blinker continuously. Verify that the microphone is working by listening for a hissing sound on the loudspeakers.
· Stop pressing the press to test button and verify that it returns to the normal position.
· Without holding the press to test button, press the emergency knob again. If the valve is properly closed, the blinker should not illuminate and no sound of oxygen flow should be heard. [5:526]
This procedure verifies not only that the mask supplies oxygen when it’s supposed to, but also that it doesn’t supply oxygen when it’s not supposed to. The pilots of flight 804 would have been quite familiar with this procedure. But were the masks actually working properly on the day of the accident?
According to the accident aircraft’s technical log, the first officer’s entire mask stowage box was replaced just three days before the accident after the press to test button was found to be “stuck.” The report doesn’t say whether it was stuck in the depressed position or the normal position. However, the Egyptian report mentions that the “new” oxygen box fitted to the accident aircraft had previously been installed on another aircraft, but was removed due to a faulty left-hand door reset mechanism — a fault that could cause the valve to remain open. The box was overhauled and inspected by a UK-based company prior to its installation on the accident aircraft, but no investigation into this overhaul was conducted. [1:63]
There had been other problems as well. On March 20th, two months before the crash, the crew oxygen cylinder was replaced after the flight crew reported that the oxygen quantity was decreasing during every flight sector, presumably due to a leak. Then the very next day, the cover over the captain’s stowage box had to be repaired after a flight crew reported that it was broken. And back on February 17th, the spare oxygen mask was reported inoperative and had to be repaired. [1:63–64]
The Egyptian report implicitly argued that because 10 flights had occurred since the first officer’s stowage box was replaced, without any complaints in the technical log, it must have been operating correctly. [1:276–277] However, the BEA pointed out in its comments that it was not possible to categorically state this. [23:655] Improper maintenance can introduce latent faults that don’t reveal themselves until days, months, or even years later.
While there was no specific evidence of improper maintenance, the BEA did not have access to, nor did the EAAID provide, any detailed account of the maintenance activity. If media reports are to be believed, then there were many problems with this aircraft that were not recorded in the technical log [20], which raises questions about both the quality of the maintenance and the usefulness of the logbook as a means of evaluating the condition of aircraft systems. The BEA was unable to verify any of these allegations using the information the EAAID had given them.
In summary, it would seem like there was no direct evidence of improper oxygen system behavior on flight 804 prior to the event. But as it turns out, by using a clever analysis of the CVR audio, the BEA discovered that this wasn’t the case.
To understand how they did it, we need to talk briefly about the way the CVR integrates inputs from the various cockpit microphones.
The CVR records audio on four main channels — one for each pilot, one for the jumpseat occupant, and one via the cockpit area microphone, or CAM, which records all ambient noises.
Each pilot’s channel is actually a composite of either three or four input sources, consisting of radio and interphone communications, the boom microphone on the pilot’s headset, the pilot’s handheld push-to-talk microphone, and — if it’s activated — the oxygen mask microphone as well. [1:226] These inputs are integrated before the audio data is written to the solid state memory in the CVR, so they can’t be easily untangled. However, it is sometimes possible to determine which microphone the pilot was actually using based on context.
At EgyptAir, pilots typically wear their headsets up until reaching 10,000 feet, after which they may take them off and use their handheld microphones to make radio transmissions. [5:598] Incoming transmissions will then be played over the loudspeaker. However, outgoing radio transmissions can only be made from one type of microphone at a time — either the boom mic, the handheld mic, or the oxygen mask mic. The normal order of priority for these three input sources is the handheld mic, followed by the oxygen mask mic, then the boom mic. [5:534] That is to say, when the push-to-talk button is pressed on the handheld mic, it overrides all other mics; if the oxygen mask mic is active, it overrides the boom mic; and the boom mic only accepts radio transmissions if both other mics are inactive.
Even when the headset boom mic isn’t in use, it still records ambient audio. But the oxygen mask mic only records audio when the valve inside the stowage box is open, which means that if the status of the mask microphone can be determined, it can be used a proxy for the valve position. In fact, that’s exactly what the BEA did during its analysis of the CVR. By comparing the frequencies of the background noise on the captain’s and first officer’s CVR channels, the BEA discovered that the first officer’s channel contained a low-frequency “cavernous” sound that was not present on the captain’s channel, which was identified as the sound of an oxygen mask microphone recording audio while still inside the stowage box. This sound was present throughout the last 30 minutes of the flight. Although the CVR recorded two hours of audio, data more than 30 minutes old was only saved from the CAM, so it was likely that the mask microphone was active from the start of the recording, even though its effect was only evident during the last 30 minutes. [5:533]
Furthermore, while the oxygen mask mic being active would have prevented the first officer from using his headset boom mic for radio transmissions, he wouldn’t have realized this because as the pilot flying, he was not responsible for radio communications. [5:534] The implicit conclusion here is that the first officer’s mask microphone was probably active from the moment the plane departed Charles de Gaulle Airport. Barring an improbable failure of the solenoid, this meant that the valve was presumably open that whole time as well.
In its report, the EAAID claimed that the mask mic could not have been active because the contents of the two pilots’ audio channels were the same. [1:230] But since the frequency analysis used by the BEA shows categorically that they were not, and the EAAID doesn’t present any frequency analysis at all, the Egyptian claim is likely counterfactual and can be disregarded.
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The BEA was not able to determine why the first officer’s oxygen mask microphone was active using the information provided by the EAAID. It could have been because the press to test button was stuck again, or because one of the stowage box doors wasn’t closed properly, or it could have been something else nobody has even considered — we just don’t know. What we do know is that at 00:25 and 24 seconds, oxygen began to escape through the open valve.
As was mentioned previously, at this point the CVR captured a hissing sound lasting 2.6 seconds. This sound was heard very clearly on the first officer’s channel, less clearly on the jumpseat occupant’s channel, and very faintly on the captain’s channel and the CAM channel. This indicates that the sound came from the first officer’s oxygen mask and was picked up by his mask microphone. [5:537] Furthermore, the BEA wrote that the “hollow” sound of the hiss corresponded to a mask set to 100% oxygen [5:539], which is the default setting according to the pre-flight procedures. [5:526]
The BEA noted that pushing the press to test button only results in oxygen flow for about 0.7 to 0.9 seconds, which was much shorter than the sound heard on the CVR. To make oxygen escape for 2.6 seconds, someone must have pressed and held the emergency knob, causing oxygen to flow from the mask at a positive pressure of 5 bars. [5:539]
The BEA believed that whoever pressed on the knob likely did so intentionally. Due to the somewhat awkward location of the emergency knob, and the fact that the knob is not normally accessible when the cover over the box is closed, it was difficult to see how it could be pressed accidentally. And although there was no commentary on the CVR that would explain why the first officer would be messing with his oxygen mask, the BEA was able to come up with a plausible hypothesis. According to this theory, the first officer might have realized that his oxygen mask mic was active because it picked up the sound of him moving objects around in the adjacent document storage compartment and played them over his loudspeaker. Such sounds might not have been noticeable earlier in the flight due to the conversations and background music, but relative quiet had settled in just before the event, as the captain decided to rest and the music started to mellow. Suddenly noticing these sounds, the first officer might have suspected that his oxygen mask valve was not properly reset, prompting him to do what he did every day during the pre-flight checks — he pressed the emergency knob and listened for the sound of oxygen flowing. If he didn’t hear flowing oxygen, that would tell him that the valve was closed; and if he did, then it meant that the valve was open when it shouldn’t be. [5:540] Furthermore, because the captain was resting, he might have decided not to explain what he was doing until he was certain that there was a problem.
The above sequence of events could explain what happened at the very start of the event — but it didn’t explain what happened next.
After the first officer let go of the emergency knob, the hissing sound stopped for 1.7 seconds. The captain made an unintelligible comment, and then there was a sharp transient noise, described as a “pop,” which came from inside the first officer’s mask stowage box. This “pop” was followed immediately by a loud, continuous leaking noise, with an accelerating character described as a “sound runaway.” And less than two seconds later, the first officer shouted, “Fire!” [5:535–536]
Using a crew oxygen system setup in a laboratory environment, the BEA was able to confirm that the leaking sound most closely resembled a leak from a ruptured hose upstream of the mask but inside the mask stowage box. However, rupturing a hose didn’t produce a sound runaway. [5:541] In fact, the only way to produce a sound runaway was to ignite fuel in the presence of the oxygen leak, because it turned out that this “runaway” was the particular sound of components inside the stowage box burning. [5:580] Evidently, at the time of the sudden leak, a spark was introduced inside the stowage box, and a fire erupted. But where could such a spark have come from?
In order to find out, the BEA decided to take a look back at previous incidents involving oxygen fires in aircraft cockpits. As it turned out, there were several examples, each of which involved a different aircraft, a different oxygen system, and a different ignition source. So before we continue, let’s take a look at some of those incidents and their potential relationship to flight 804.
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In its report, the BEA describes four previous cases of fires on transport category aircraft caused or worsened by the crew oxygen system. All of the cases happened between 2008 and 2012; I wasn’t able to determine whether this was coincidental or whether the BEA had chosen this specific date range.
In the first case, on the 28th of June 2008, an ABX Air Boeing 767 cargo plane, operating for DHL, caught fire during engine startup at San Francisco International Airport. The National Transportation Safety Board determined that a short-circuit energized a spring inside an oxygen hose located in the supernumerary crew area behind the cockpit, causing the oxygen-filled hose to ignite. During the event, the CVR recorded a pop followed by a continuous hissing sound. The fire quickly spread out of control, forcing both crewmembers to evacuate. The blaze eventually burst through the crown of the fuselage, and the aircraft was damaged beyond repair. [5:516–517] The NTSB noted that a “lack of positive separation between electrical wiring and electrically conductive oxygen system components” was a major cause of the incident. [33:iv]
The next noteworthy case took place on the 29th of February 2009, when an Atlantic Southeast Airlines Bombardier CRJ-200 caught fire while parked at the gate in Tallahassee, Florida, USA. When external electrical power was hooked up to the aircraft, a fire started at a faulty junction box, then spread upward and attacked a hose supplying oxygen to the jumpseat occupant’s oxygen mask. The failure of the hose resulted in an oxygen leak that rapidly accelerated the fire, accompanied by a loud hissing sound. The captain and a flight attendant, who were the only people on board, evacuated safely before the fire burned through the upper fuselage. [5:517–518][34]
In the third incident mentioned by the BEA, a fire erupted in the cockpit of an EgyptAir Boeing 777 as it was preparing to push back from the gate at Cairo International Airport. A pop and a hissing sound were heard, followed by smoke and fire from the vicinity of the first officer’s oxygen mask stowage box. As the cabin crew hurried to evacuate the passengers, the captain attempted to put out the fire with a fire extinguisher, but he was unsuccessful. Although all the passengers successfully evacuated, the fire destroyed most of the cockpit and the airplane was written off. The EAAID investigated the incident and found that while a break in the first officer’s oxygen supply greatly worsened the fire, it was not possible to determine whether the oxygen leak created the conditions for the fire to start, or whether an already existing fire suddenly breached the oxygen supply. [5:518]
The final incident described by the BEA was undoubtedly the most bizarre, but it took place in Turkey, which did not publicly release accident investigation reports until very recently. Information concerning the incident was provided in confidence to the BEA by Turkish authorities. According to this information, on the 14th of October 2012, a Corendon Airlines Boeing 737 caught fire during pushback from the gate in Antalya after a cigarette ignited a fuel source in the vicinity of a leaking oxygen mask. Apparently, due to unknown circumstances, oxygen was leaking from the mask into the stowage box. Unaware of this developing problem, the captain lit a cigarette. A couple minutes later, the burning cigarette came into contact with some heavy cologne that one of the pilots had brought to the cockpit, causing a fire. The pilots then saw a ball of sparks move through the air toward the captain’s oxygen mask, which then burst into flames along with its surroundings. During the event the CVR recorded a hissing sound, followed by a pause, and then a sound runaway. The oxygen mask was subsequently found lying on the floor, but it’s not clear from the BEA’s description whether the captain was attempting to retrieve his mask in order to protect himself from smoke while fighting the fire, at which point the ball of sparks flew toward the mask; or whether he removed the mask from the box after the ball of sparks flew toward it, in order to stop the fire. It’s possible that it was the latter, because the captain reported trying to squeeze the oxygen tube shut with his bare hands (needless to say, he did not succeed). In either case, the fire quickly spread out of control, and the flight crew’s attempts to put it out were unsuccessful. All occupants were safely evacuated, but the aircraft was damaged beyond repair. [5:519–520][35] It should be noted that the sequence of events during this incident was never fully elucidated and the description of the event is confusing.
Now, having briefly discussed these four incidents, there are some important conclusions that I want to draw. One of these is that designing a system to deliver a highly volatile gas on board a moving vehicle is inherently difficult. In fact, because oxygen is a universal accelerant that makes it easier for anything to burn, some ignition sources that would otherwise be marginal or irrelevant can cause devastating fires if they come into contact with the oxygen system. This makes it harder to preclude all ignition sources, especially for a complex system with multiple moving parts that must operate safely for millions of flight hours across a fleet of thousands of aircraft. And with that in mind, I would argue that flight crew oxygen systems are, on the whole, very well designed, given that until flight 804, the most serious incidents involving these systems resulted in no fatalities or serious injuries.
However, at the same time it must be noted that any of these incidents would likely have resulted in a total loss of the aircraft with no survivors had they taken place in the air. Since there was nothing particular about ground operations that led to the fires in three out of the four cases, the absence of a catastrophic crash caused by a crew oxygen system failure was probably attributable to luck.
As for whether there’s any significance to the fact that one of these incidents also occurred at EgyptAir, I have no way of knowing.
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Informed in part by knowledge of these previous incidents, the BEA assembled a list of possible ignition sources to be tested in the context of flight 804. This list included a cigarette, a lithium battery failure, a particle impact inside the oxygen tube, static electricity, or the spontaneous ignition of dust or grease in an oxygen-enriched environment. [5:545]
Without going into excessive detail, the BEA was unable to produce ignition of dust in the presence of oxygen, nor were they able to generate a spark sufficient to ignite an oxygen tube by shooting metal particles through the tube, even though this phenomenon was described in scientific literature. The BEA also found that sources of static electricity in the vicinity of the mask stowage box were insufficient to cause ignition. [5:588] Also, a failed lithium battery inside the document storage compartment didn’t breach the neighboring oxygen system, and created large quantities of smoke prior to flames becoming visible [5:550], which was incompatible with the known facts of flight 804.
Several tests were also undertaken involving a lit cigarette. Simply lighting a cigarette in the vicinity of a leaking oxygen mask didn’t cause a fire, and even throwing the lit cigarette directly into the oxygen mask box failed to ignite the contents of the box unless the burning end of the cigarette was placed directly against the flexible oxygen hose. [5:555] But in the latter case, the oxygen-enriched atmosphere allowed the cigarette to ignite the oxygen hose, which then failed, causing an oxygen leak that rapidly accelerated the fire until it escaped from the box and spread to surrounding components. [5:554–555]
As you may recall, the Italian newspaper Corriere della Sera reported in 2022 that the pilots of flight 804 may have been smoking, and that this might have ignited leaking oxygen. However, in its report the BEA rebutted this theory, noting not only that handling a cigarette near the oxygen leak was insufficient to cause a fire, but also that there was no evidence the pilots were smoking at all. At one point during the cockpit voice recording, a possible reference to smoking was made, but this turned out to be a mistranslated turn of phrase relating to the sick passenger. And at another point, one of the pilots queried whether the other had quit smoking because he no longer smelled like smoke, which also could have been misinterpreted as evidence of smoking in the cockpit. [5:535]
Overall, none of these ignition scenarios seemed realistic in the context of flight 804. The only one that resulted in an oxygen-fed fire was a cigarette, but even in this scenario, a runaway fire was improbable. Furthermore, any burning object introduced into the stowage box resulted in crackling noises that were picked up by the mask microphone prior to the start of the leak — noises that weren’t heard on flight 804. [5:578] In fact, there was no evidence of fire until the first officer shouted “fire” less than two seconds after the start of the oxygen leak, and 6 seconds after he first depressed the emergency knob. Therefore, it appeared to the BEA that the oxygen leak and the fire occurred almost simultaneously. [5:588] This finding was dissimilar to any of the tests, but it bore some resemblance to the 2008 fire in San Francisco, where a failure internal to the oxygen system resulted in an ignition inside of an oxygen hose, followed by its immediate rupture. A “pop” was also heard in both cases right before the appearance of flames. As a result, the BEA came to believe that the ignition source on flight 804 was likely inside the oxygen hose. [5:588] A mechanical failure such as a short circuit would be consistent with the available evidence; however an exact ignition source couldn’t be determined.
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With all this information in mind, let’s return to the cockpit voice recording, starting from the moment that the first officer called out, “Fire.”
Immediately after this first callout, the captain and the flight attendant on the jumpseat also shouted, “fire,” and the captain repeatedly asked for a fire extinguisher. [2:439] Within three seconds after the start of the leak, a sound runaway was heard as the contents of the stowage box collectively ignited. Audio analysis showed that the first officer’s oxygen mask microphone then ceased recording, having been destroyed by the fire in the space of four seconds. [5:582] Thirteen seconds after that, the first officer’s headset boom mic also stopped recording [5:532], indicating that the fire was spreading rapidly throughout the right side of the cockpit.
To better understand the propagation of the fire during this phase, the BEA conducted several tests inside a mockup of an A320 cockpit, constructed using pieces from a decommissioned aircraft. In the first test, a leaking oxygen mask was ignited inside the first officer’s stowage box, and the effects were observed. [5:572] Within seconds, the fire became very intense and high flames erupted from the stowage box, followed by a momentary diminishment of the fire. However, the blaze increased in severity again over the following minute until it escaped from the stowage box and began to consume nearby elements. A detonation was heard, the room filled with black smoke, and the fire continued to intensify until the test was aborted. [5:573]
In the second test, 22 seconds into the blaze the BEA activated a halon fire extinguisher of the type installed in flight 804’s cockpit. The room immediately filled with smoke, but within 20 seconds, bright flames reappeared and steadily intensified until the test was aborted. [5:574]
A third test was conducted under the same conditions as the second test, except that the oxygen supply valve was closed before activating the extinguisher. In that case, the room again filled with smoke, but it took four minutes for flames to reappear. [5:575–576]
In all tests, the fire, propelled by the oxygen leak, produced a terrifying “blowtorch” effect, and the flames were literally white-hot. The fire also was also capable of igniting almost anything in the immediate area, including fire resistant materials. [5:576–577]
Another important takeaway from these tests was that a halon fire extinguisher is ineffective at putting out a fire fueled by an oxygen leak. [5:590]
The chemical CFC2ClBr (Bromochlorodifluoromethane), known commercially as halon 1211, has long been the preferred chemical extinguishing agent for aircraft fire extinguishers because the volume of product needed to put out a fire is very low, which saves weight and space. As opposed to CO2, which smothers a fire by displacing air, or water, which cools a fire, halon extinguishes flames by reacting with oxygen, starving the fire instead. However, unlike CO2 or water, halon has no cooling effect [5:568], and when exposed to prolonged high temperatures, it tends to produce a variety of very scary chemicals like carbonyl fluoride, carbon tetrachloride, hydrofluoric acid, hydrochloric acid, and hydrogen bromide. By testing halon extinguishers against an oxygenated fire, the BEA found that the halon failed to extinguish the fire because the fuel remained hot, allowing it to reignite when the oxygen leak reintroduced oxygen into the air. [5:570] Furthermore, this renewed blaze degraded the halon into all of the chemicals mentioned above, creating toxic smoke that would have seriously injured or possibly killed anyone inside the cockpit. [5:571]
Halon fire extinguishers are scheduled to be phased out of most commercial aircraft by the end of 2025. [5:513] However, most of the extinguishers on board flight 804 were still halon types, and if the crew had tried to extinguish the fire using them, the results might have been fatal. Nevertheless, investigators didn’t hear any sounds on the CVR that resembled a fire extinguisher being used, so this issue might not have played any role in the accident. [5:589]
Returning to the accident sequence, it was apparent that the pilots would have lacked any straightforward means to extinguish the fire. The halon extinguisher in the cockpit was located behind the first officer’s seat and was likely inaccessible due to the flames, and even if it had been available, it probably would have made the situation worse. [5:589] Instead, it appears as though the cockpit door was opened then closed [2:439], and one or more crewmembers may have left the flight deck. Certainly the first officer would not have remained in his seat just inches from an intense fire.
From this point onward, little is known about the activities of the crew, but the BEA did identify some clues.
Around 46 seconds after the start of the event, the lavatory smoke detector activated, producing warnings in the cockpit and a triple chime alarm in the cabin, which went off every 30 seconds. In an ingenious piece of detective work, the BEA used the volume of the cabin alarm to determine when the cockpit door was open or closed, even though the roar of the leak and fire were so intense that they masked the sound of the door itself. Using this technique, they determined that at the time of the first alarm at 00:26:17, the door was closed, [5:542] consistent with the most recent intelligible statement on the CVR, which was the captain shouting, “Close the door.” [2:439] However, 30 seconds later at 00:26:48, the alarm was much louder, indicating that the door was open. A sound that might have been the door opening was barely audible two seconds before the alarm. The door remained open for at least another 30 seconds and was still open when the alarm next went off at 00:27:18, but by 00:27:48, someone had closed it again. After that, the audio from the cockpit area microphone became too degraded to render further judgment [5:542], and it stopped recording entirely by 00:29:00. [5:532]
In the meantime, the roar of the oxygen leak continued for more than three minutes, until the sound started to die away as the oxygen cylinder drew close to empty. The sound of the leak finally stopped at around 00:28:46. [5:541] However, crackling sounds could be heard as the fire continued to spread, and multiple systems had already begun to fail as the fire attacked the 120VU electrical panel behind the first officer’s seat. In the space of less than 20 seconds, the FDR recorded the loss of the traffic collision avoidance system, the rudder pedal force sensor, the №2 spoiler-elevator computer, the №2 flight augmentation computer, the weather radar, the №2 flight management guidance computer, the №2 electronic engine control, the №3 display management computer, and the engine vibration monitoring unit. [1:69] By 00:29:39, so many computers had failed that the autopilot was no longer able to control the airplane, causing it to disconnect with a loud cavalry charge alarm. [5:530] Four seconds after that, all recorded flight data parameters became invalid [23:660], and after another 9 seconds, the cockpit voice recording abruptly ended. [5:543]
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As for what happened after the failure of the black boxes, neither the BEA nor the EAAID engaged in much speculation. It was evident from the radar data that the plane spiraled down toward the sea in one piece, but the conditions aboard the plane could not be determined. In its conclusions, the BEA simply wrote, “It has not been possible to determine whether the crew remained in the cockpit, whether they were unconscious, or whether they fled the fire and then returned or remained outside the cockpit” [5:584].
The only signal received from the plane after the end of the CVR recording was the distress signal from the emergency locator transmitter. As a reminder, the EAAID believed that the device must have registered a forward deceleration of at least 2.0 G’s in order to have activated. However, it’s hard to imagine how this could have happened in the air. Two vertical G’s during a sudden climb is easily achievable, but two longitudinal G’s while airborne is somewhat harder to fathom. For that reason, when I first started researching this accident, I decided to look into other possible reasons why the ELT might have activated, in the hope that they might shed light on what was taking place on board the aircraft.
According to the Egyptian report, the accident airplane was actually fitted with not one, but three ELTs, only one of which was activated by G-forces. The other two were portable ELTs, designed to activate upon submersion in water, or manually by a person. [1:116] Because neither the Egyptian report nor the French report stated which ELT generated the distress signal, I examined the possibility that a portable ELT was manually activated by someone on board the aircraft. However, my initial conclusion was that this was highly improbable. Since evidence of fire damage was found on passenger seats and other items from the cabin [1:202], including some human remains [1:204], the most plausible assumption is that conditions inside the aircraft had already become unsurvivable by the time the ELT activated some 7 minutes after the end of the CVR recording. All evidence suggests that the fire simply kept growing, presumably filling the plane with toxic smoke, until the end of the flight.
Having come to this conclusion, I discovered that the matter was moot because the BEA had the answer buried in its comments on the Egyptian report. According to SAFRAN, which manufactured the ELT, the signal was sent out by the G-activated ELT in two bursts 5 seconds apart, both of which were transmitted in “test mode.” I wasn’t able to find more information about this function of the ELT, but the manufacturer believed that this behavior was most consistent with a short circuit in the ELT’s command line. The G-activated ELT can also be armed or activated using a cockpit switch, which transmits commands via a wire to the ELT at the back of the aircraft. Most likely, this circuit was damaged by the fire, causing the emission of a test signal. [23:651] This confirms that the fire was probably still increasing in size by 00:37.
The Egyptian report does contain a photo of a life jacket recovered from the scene, with the remark that the vest had been “used.” [1:186] However, the report doesn’t attempt to interpret this finding, nor is it particularly surprising, since the passengers were certainly aware of the emergency from an early stage. This finding therefore has no bearing on whether anyone was alive at the time the ELT activated. In fact, if I had to guess, I would say everyone on board was most likely already dead before the aircraft hit the water.
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In the end, the BEA concluded that the most likely cause of the crash was an unknown mechanical failure inside the first officer’s oxygen distribution system, resulting in a rapidly spreading, oxygenated fire that could not be extinguished by the crew. The flight crew was either incapacitated or was unable to return to the cockpit, causing the flight path to become uncontrolled after the autopilot disconnected. [5:590]
Unlike the Egyptian report, the BEA report followed investigative best practices, provided empirical support for its assumptions, and identified a scenario that was consistent with the evidence. As such, the BEA findings form the basis for Part 5 of this article: a dramatic retelling of the most probable accident sequence. That isn’t to say that the narrative in Part 5 is definitely what happened aboard flight 804 — in fact, it’s explicitly not, because I’ve filled in some of the more vexing gaps with informed speculation, marked with asterisks where it appears. But the upcoming story is, to the best of our knowledge, the most plausible version of events. And it’s a story that I think will haunt for me for a long time to come.
Note: Again, the following chapter is a speculative extrapolation from the accident report. It is not a factual account of what happened, only a fact-based one. Sentences marked with asterisks should not be construed as definitive. However, statements in quotation marks are real, taken from the CVR transcript.
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Part 5: I Ask Forgiveness from God
The time was 2:25 in the morning.
Aboard EgyptAir flight 804, Captain Shokair was getting ready to rest after his in-flight meal. It was the middle of the night, they were cruising steadily at 37,000 feet, and there was little left for the pilots to do, other than wait for the descent into Cairo.
To a flight attendant, Shokair said, “I want a blanket, I feel cold.”
“You want a blanket, am I right?” the flight attendant clarified.
“Are you sleeping or something?” First Officer Assem asked.
Moments later, the cockpit door opened and the flight attendant entered. To his first officer, Captain Shokair said, “You too, you told me I disturbed you.”
“What?” Assem asked.
“Blanket?” the flight attendant said.
“Yes please,” said Shokair.
“And a pillow?”
“Okay, and a pillow,” Shokair agreed.
The door closed with a soft clunk as the flight attendant departed. Twenty-two seconds later, it opened again, as the flight attendant delivered the requested items. First Officer Assem said something unintelligible, to which the flight attendant replied, “Yes.”
“You are four, right?” Assem asked, probably referring to the flight attendant’s position in the cabin. “Have a seat,” he suggested.
“Can I sit?” she asked.
One of the pilots may have indicated non-verbally that she could, as the next sound was the creak of the jumpseat unfolding from its stowed position, up against the wall.
In the background, Athens area control could be heard speaking to other nearby aircraft.
“Ethiopian 706, continue present heading.”
“Present heading Ethiopian 706.”
“Ethiopian 502 contact Macedonia radar 133 decimal 575, bye bye.”
“133, 575, bye.”
Someone turned down the volume on the light music drifting through the cockpit, maybe so as not to disturb the captain’s rest.*
At the controls by himself, the young first officer perhaps decided to check a map in advance of the upcoming handover to Cairo area control, or perhaps he decided to prepare early for the descent by reviewing his charts.* He reached over to the document storage compartment and fumbled around for a chart, or an iPad, or whatever it was that he needed.* And through the newfound quiet, he noticed, to his surprise, that each muffled sound was being broadcast right back at him through his loudspeaker. Why would that be?* He paused, then remembered.* The oxygen mask microphone is right next to the document storage compartment, and it broadcasts to the loudspeaker — that must be it, he thought.*
He knew that the microphone shouldn’t be active, and if it was, that meant his oxygen mask might not be properly reset.* He considered alerting the captain, but decided not to — after all, if he was able to reset it normally, there was no need to disturb him when he was trying to sleep.*
Falling back on the pre-flight test procedure, he pressed down on the emergency knob and listened for the sound of oxygen flowing. If he heard it, that meant the valve was open and he’d need to close it. If he didn’t hear anything, then maybe the problem was just with the microphone.
As soon as he pressed the knob, oxygen flowed from the mask with a hollow PSSSSS. That’s interesting, he thought.* It shouldn’t be doing that.* Little did he know that a short circuit between the wiring for the emergency knob and a metal bracket had just created a spark inside the oxygen tube, igniting the tube’s interior walls.*
Alerted by the hissing noise, Shokair stirred from his rest and said something unintelligible. But before Assem could reply, his oxygen tube burst, and the fire within came roaring out through the breach, sending white hot flames shooting upward out of the oxygen mask box.
“Fire!” Assem screamed. “Fire!”
Immediately catching sight of the massive blaze, the flight attendant and Captain Shokair both also exclaimed, “Fire!”
Assem scrambled out of the seat as the flames licked at his coat and singed his hair.* “Extinguisher!” Shokair shouted. “Extinguisher quickly, bring [a] fire extinguisher quickly! Bring the extinguisher quickly, fire!”
The flight attendant glanced at the extinguisher mounted behind the first officer’s seat, but it was already surrounded by flames.* Thinking quickly, she opened the cockpit door and rushed to grab the extinguisher from the galley. *
As she left, smoke poured through the door behind her.* To Assem, Shokair ordered, “Close the door!” Sounds of coughing rang out against the chaos.
Driven from his seat and with nowhere safe to sit down, Assem fled the cockpit and closed the door behind him to prevent the smoke from spreading.* He and the cabin crew hurried to find smoke hoods and fire extinguishers, gearing up to battle the blaze.*
Captain Shokair might have stayed in the cockpit to make sure the plane was under control, or he might have left too, intending to fight his way back in with appropriate gear — there isn’t enough evidence one way or another for me to speculate.
Cutting through the drone of the oxygen leak and the roar of the flames, Athens ATC could be heard contacting another flight: “EL AL 388, contact Nicosia radar
125.5 Kali.”
“125.5 Kalimira…” the aircraft replied.
The continuous repetitive chime of the A320’s master warning suddenly sounded, triggered by the lavatory smoke alarm. The door hadn’t been closed quickly enough to prevent smoke from invading the forward lavatories and galley, and now acrid fumes were seeping into the cabin.*
Moments later, someone opened the cockpit door, but there was no audible sound of voices or human activity. Had Shokair decided to leave the cockpit, or was a crewmember trying to return to extinguish the fire? There’s no way to guess.
By now the cockpit was probably filling with smoke from the ceiling down to floor, allowing fumes to seep down into the avionics compartment, triggering an avionics smoke warning. If the crew found an extinguisher, then for whatever reason they couldn’t get close to the fire, because there was no sound of an extinguisher discharge. At some indeterminate time, the cockpit door was closed again.
Mere moments later , the Athens controller could be heard transmitting, “EgyptAir 804, contact Cairo 124.7, bye bye,” but even though the words rang out loud and clear in the cockpit, there was no reply.
“EgyptAir 804, contact Cairo 124.7,” Athena repeated. Fifteen seconds passed, and Athena tried again, calling out, “EgyptAir 804?” But the only response was the dreadful sound of silence.
As the oxygen in the cylinder began to run out and the noise of the leak started to die away, the background music became audible again, jangling away in the empty cockpit, a perverse soundtrack overlaid onto the deepest circle of hell.
And yet the cockpit wasn’t empty — there was someone inside, their ragged breathing captured by the CVR as the noise faded away. Their voice was picked up by Captain Shokair’s microphone, but was it him? It’s hard to be sure, because his microphone was the only one still working. And had he re-entered the cockpit while the door was open, or had he been there the entire time? There was no way to know.
For several seconds, the weak sound of breathing continued, followed by the thud of an object falling to the floor. And then, uttering the last words of flight 804, words heard by no one save for that lonely sentinel, the CVR, he said, “[I] ask forgiveness from God.”
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As the cockpit voice recording continued to tick down toward its sudden and mysterious end, Athena could be heard trying again to raise flight 804, but the person in the cockpit didn’t respond. The sound of breathing was last noted three minutes and 12 seconds after the start of the fire, but after that flight 804 might as well have been a ghost plane. No sign of life aboard the aircraft was ever again recorded.
Four more times, the sound of Athena calling flight 804 echoed from the speakers, answered by no one. Listening to the controller’s frantic radio transmissions, another EgyptAir pilot called out for First Officer Mohamed Assem by name, hoping to hear something, anything, but his words disappeared into the lifeless, swirling blackness inside the cockpit.
And still the fire kept growing, launching a ruthless attack on the electrical panel behind the first officer’s seat. Within the space of 19 seconds, a dozen computers failed, compromising the A320’s fly by wire control system.
For unclear reasons, the autopilot banked the plane slightly to the left, then reversed to the right, leveling out near its original course. Moments later, unable to fly the plane due to the escalating computer failures, it disconnected, triggering a cavalry charge alarm that was picked up by the CVR. No one cancelled the warning or took control of the airplane, and the last sound heard on the CVR was the crash of objects falling in the cockpit. The flight data recorder then stopped recording, followed by the CVR nine seconds later. It’s difficult to say whether this was because the fire caused an interruption to the power supply, or because the fire individually destroyed critical components of each system in short succession. But clearly catastrophic failures were occurring, because just three seconds after the end of the CVR recording, the plane’s transponder disappeared from Greek radar screens as well.
Cut off from the world, flight 804 began to drift from its course into a deepening spiral, as an inferno ate it alive from within. Regardless of whether the passengers and crew engaged in a last desperate battle to stop the blaze, or whether they were quickly overwhelmed by the noxious smoke, the final chapter of their story will never be known. There might have been a panicked rush to the back of the plane as the fire burst through the cockpit door, or they might have spent their last minutes hunched over, struggling to breathe, isolated from one another by a fog of toxic blackness.* Perhaps some passengers hurried to don their life jackets, knowing that they were going to crash into the sea; or perhaps it was over too quickly, as the blaze, like a raging beast, roared into the cabin, annihilating all hope for those who remained.*
And still, for nine long minutes, the ghost plane descended in a graveyard spiral, each orbit growing tighter and tighter like a star drawn inexorably into a black hole, until it finally slammed into the water, no doubt with a tremendous boom, but no one was around to hear it.
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Part 6: A Legacy to Be Written
In the concluding section of their report, the BEA effectively wrote that the investigation into flight 804 shouldn’t be considered over. The publication of a report was a major step, but due to the limitations placed on their efforts, there were several areas of interest that the BEA wasn’t able to pursue, but which might reveal more about what caused the crash.
One of these was the possibility of an overpressure within the oxygen system. After the BEA study had already been completed, the agency became aware of three cases of in-flight oxygen leaks caused by overpressure in the oxygen system on A320-family aircraft. [5:591] It was then realized that the initial 2.6-second flow of oxygen heard at the start of the sequence of events, which was tentatively attributed to a person pushing the emergency knob with the valve already open, could also have been caused by an overpressure event forcing oxygen past the open valve with no human input. One item of evidence potentially supporting this hypothesis was an odd observation about the oxygen leak that the BEA wasn’t able to fully reconcile — namely, the fact that the time taken to exhaust the oxygen cylinder on flight 804 was much less than the oxygen system manufacturer had calculated. [5:592] Assuming a breach of an oxygen hose, with a constant pressure of 5 bars supplied by the regulator on the oxygen cylinder, it should have taken 11 minutes to empty the cylinder, when in fact the cylinder emptied after just 3 minutes and 23 seconds. In its original study, the BEA speculated that this could have been because the theoretical value was overestimated; because the cylinder was not very full; or because the flow rate was greater than what would be achieved by a pressure of 5 bars. Normally, an overpressure should open a relief valve, venting the oxygen overboard, but this can’t occur instantly, and in the meantime oxygen may temporarily flow through an open valve and out of the mask at a pressure above 5 bars. [5:541] Because the BEA’s ignition and propagation studies all assumed that the flow pressure was 5 bars, some ignition scenarios that were ruled out might be ruled back in if the real pressure was higher. [5:592]
In order to resolve this question, the BEA recommended that the European Aviation Safety Agency (EASA) and the system manufacturer work together to analyze and test the possible consequences of an oxygen system overpressure event, and the possible relevance of such an event to flight 804. [5:592]
Although not mentioned by the BEA, it’s also possible that EgyptAir is in possession of more detailed maintenance or technical data about the aircraft that could shed light on the cause of the failure. The numerous and varied system faults described by some news reports could point to a more serious electrical issue on board the aircraft. [20] Unfortunately, the Egyptian investigation declined to make any of this information available. Similarly, the BEA was unable to examine whether a maintenance error could have introduced a latent failure when the first officer’s oxygen mask stowage box was replaced three days before the crash.
On a related note, the crew oxygen system was certified on the basis of a risk analysis demonstrating that a failure or combination of failures that could lead to an oxygen fire would be “extremely improbable,” meaning approximately one in 100 million to one in a billion per flight hour. However, the BEA pointed out that that analysis didn’t take into account the possibility of incorrect assembly by maintenance personnel. [23:655] It’s not standard practice for manufacturers to include human maintenance errors in their risk analyses in most cases because the manufacturer can’t directly control the practices of the end customer, nor can they necessarily predict all forms of maintenance misadventure. Therefore, while the BEA didn’t specifically call for further study of the role of maintenance in the crash of flight 804, this question remains incompletely resolved.
In its conclusion, the BEA also highlighted the fact that an oxygen fire cannot be extinguished by the crew using existing procedures and equipment. However, the BEA observed during its study that turning off the crew oxygen system using the CREW OXY pushbutton on the oxygen control panel prior to attacking the fire improved the odds of success. [5:590] Furthermore, a fire fueled by an oxygen leak has some characteristic elements that are easily recognizable, including a loud blowtorching sound and white-hot flames. Therefore, the BEA recommended that EASA consider developing procedures and associated training that would instruct flight crews to identify an oxygen fire using these characteristics, and to cut off the oxygen supply before extinguishing the fire. [5:594] No recommendations were made regarding the dangers of halon fire extinguishers because these are already scheduled to be removed from all aircraft imminently.
Earlier in its report, the BEA also mentioned that some unspecified aircraft have “flow fuses” that automatically cut off oxygen flow when a leak is detected in the stowage box. [5:512] The A320 doesn’t have flow fuses, nor is it clear to me that such devices are common. The BEA didn’t issue a recommendation to install flow fuses on aircraft without them, but it seems to me like this could be another useful way to reduce the consequences of an oxygen leak.
Finally, in its third recommendation the BEA considered the risks associated with cigarette use in the cockpit. Even though passengers have been forbidden from smoking on airplanes for 25 years, the rules about smoking in the cockpit are less straightforward, and international regulations appear to invest the captain with the authority to decide whether smoking will be allowed or not. [5:594] Although many countries and most airlines forbid pilots from smoking in the aircraft, media reports have stated that EgyptAir did not prohibit its pilots from smoking. [21] Again, there was no evidence that the pilots of flight 804 smoked during the flight. But even though the BEA found that a cigarette didn’t cause the fire on flight 804, some risk clearly existed, as demonstrated by the previous incident in Antalya, Turkey and the test results showing that a lit cigarette could cause an unstoppable fire if left in contact with an oxygen hose. As such, the BEA recommended that EASA examine these risks and amend regulations as necessary. [5:594–595]
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Before we conclude, it has to be reiterated that a properly conducted investigation could have more precisely pinpointed the cause of the fire within half the time it took for this report to be released. But instead, it took eight and a half years to get an incomplete answer, because Egyptian authorities decided that the safety of airline passengers around the world was less important than whatever perverse incentive compelled them to pursue a finding that was clearly wrong. Whether it was to protect the state-owned EgyptAir from liability, or to keep the crash out of the news at a time when Egypt’s tourism sector was struggling, or because someone with too much power picked a pet theory and refused to let go, or even just because the supposed experts at the EAAID don’t know what they’re doing, the result was a disservice to everyone who flies.
It is only thanks to the proactive efforts of the BEA that we know what probably happened to flight 804. Although victims’ families criticized the BEA back in 2018 for not handing over the black box data to the judicial probe [19], it seems to me that they were stuck between conflicting legal obligations. But as the years dragged on with no news from Egypt, the BEA rose to the challenge, recognizing that no one else possessed both the knowledge and willpower to continue the investigation — an investigation that needed to be continued, lest another airplane meet the same fate. And now, thanks to their efforts, the manufacturers of aircraft oxygen systems have a roadmap to follow to make their products safer. For that, I want to commend the dedication and vision of the investigators who chose not to give up on flight 804.
Unfortunately, the release of a split report will ensure that the cause of the crash is always listed as “disputed,” even though only one side was conducting a good-faith search for the cause. One of the things I wanted to make clear by writing this article is that real answers have been found, even if a few questions remain. Those answers are far from reassuring, and the fate of flight 804 will forever haunt the imagination of those who have read about it. As human beings, we have an easier time understanding such horror when there’s someone behind it, some criminal pulling the strings, or even a corporate executive knowingly signing away people’s lives in the name of greed. It can be much harder to confront those cases in which a plane full of passengers, full of people with their whole lives ahead of them, was suddenly ripped from the sky simply because the universe decided it was their time to die.
In the future, it might emerge that errors were made within EgyptAir; that opportunities existed to discover the problem. Or it might not — who’s to say? Fault is a tricky thing, and sometimes it’s not that important. Even if some mechanic somewhere made a mistake, the real lesson is that a catastrophic oxygen fire in the cockpit must never be allowed to happen again. We cannot allow anyone who boards an airplane to fear that they will spiral down into the sea, surrounded by smoke and flames, knowing that nobody is in control. We cannot allow another crew to find themselves trapped inside a burning cockpit at 37,000 feet, knowing that 66 lives are about to be lost, scrambling desperately for some solution, only to come to the terrifying realization that there’s nothing to be done, that the story was over from the moment it began. The industry must — and will — transform that horror into action, living by the mantra, “never again.” And while the best time for that action was eight years ago, it goes without saying that the second best time is now.
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Thank you so much for taking the time to read this article! Research into EgyptAir flight 804 dominated my life for a month and a half; scarcely an hour went by where I wasn’t thinking about it. All of that energy culminated in the story you just read. As a reminder, you can thank me by supporting me on Patreon, where your donations directly ensure that I can keep producing this content. Without that support, this article wouldn’t have been possible, so big thank you to everyone who has donated, and everyone who will donate in the future!
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