What happened to Egyptair flight 804?

Drew Chegash
Staff Writer

​      Five days after Egyptair flight 804 went down while flying from Paris to Cairo, small bits of debris have started to surface. Life vests, parts of wreckage, personal belongs, and even human remains have been found. The victim’s families have provided samples of DNA to help try and identify some of the remains. This accident raised the important question: what happened to the plane?
      After examining the remains of the body at the morgue, it still remains too early to determine if it was the result of an explosion or not. The only way to truly tell what happened is to retrieve the planes black boxes, which will provide critical information as to what happened to the plane. The plane was at approximately 37,000 feet when it lost all contact with the Mediterranean, shortly before it was scheduled to enter into Egyptian airspace. 

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      Although it is still up in the air as to what caused the plane to go down, it is even more controversial trying to determine how it went down. The Greek Defense Minister, Panos Kammenos, said that upon entering Egyptian airspace, “The plane swerved 90 degrees left, and then 360 degrees.” This statement sparked a dispute when the head of Egypt’s National Air Navigation Services Company challenged it, stating that the plane did not swerve or lose altitude before appearing on the radar.  Administrative board chairman Mohi El-Din Azmi stated that "the decisive information is going to come from the black boxes, and they have not been retrieved yet." Time is working against the investigators in their efforts to find the boxes and the fusel lodge of the plane. The scope of the search area keeps getting larger and larger, with teams searching in waters as deep as 10,000 feet.
      A representative of an organization devoted to families of French passengers said relatives are not sure they can trust the Egyptian investigation and want France to become more involved in the search.
      Stephane Gicquel, secretary general of the French National Federation of the Victims of Catastrophes, stated, "There will be a way to track the investigation put in place by the French government with an appointed official to defend the interests of the families in the weeks and years to come." Gicquel also stated that the families are distrustful of Egypt, in part due to how the country "cooperated very badly with the French authorities" during the investigation of the 2004 jet crash carrying mostly French tourists.  In the end, everything is still up for speculation. It is still too early to tell what caused the accident, and the search for the black boxes still continues.