Russian Passenger Jet Crashes in Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula

Plane was a Kogalymavia Airlines flight, Russian officials say

By Tamer El-Ghobashy in Cairo and
Nathan Hodge in Moscow
Updated Oct. 31, 2015 7:38 a.m. ET
8 COMMENTS

A Russian passenger jet carrying 224 people crashed in Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula after losing contact with aviation authorities on Saturday morning.

Russian news agency Interfax quoted a spokesman for the state aviation agency as saying the Airbus A321 was flying to St. Petersburg, Russia, from Sharm El Sheikh when it went missing.

Egypt’s flagship state-run newspaper, Al Ahram, quoted an Egyptian aviation official as saying the plane’s pilot had requested to land at the nearest airport after an unspecified mechanical problem shortly after taking off at 5:50 a.m. local time. The newspaper later cited another Egyptian aviation official as saying the pilot hadn’t made any distress calls or requests to land.

Egypt’s chief prosecutor said the cause of the crash was being investigated. He didn’t say whether terrorism was suspected.

A spokesman for Airbus Group SE said the company was assessing the situation and will provide further information as soon as available.

Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev to form a state commission to investigate the crash, the Kremlin said Saturday. According to the statement, 217 passengers and seven crew members were on board the aircraft.

The Russian leader “expressed his deepest sympathies to the families of those who died in the crash.”

The Russian Foreign Ministry said the plane was operated by Kogalymavia—which operates under the name Metrojet—and that the Russian Embassy in Cairo was clarifying the situation with Egyptian officials. Russia’s state aviation agency couldn’t immediately be reached for comment.

The plane was flying at 31,000 feet when it disappeared from the radar screens 23 minutes after it took off at 5:51 am local time, according to Egypt’s civil aviation authority.

The wreckage was located south of the city of Al Arish in the sparsely populated, mountainous north Sinai, according to the aviation authority. As many as 50 ambulances had been dispatched, it said.

While Egypt’s south Sinai resort cities are largely safe for visitors, a number of northern cities including Al Arish have been engulfed by a radical Islamist insurgency and the rise of Sinai Province, Islamic State’s Egyptian branch.

According to the Kremlin, Vladimir Puchkov, Russia’s minister of civil defense, emergencies and disaster relief, was ordered to send aircraft to Egypt to aid in the recovery of the wreckage of the aircraft. Russia’s first responders and Health Ministry were also instructed to immediately begin organizing assistance to relatives of the victims.

Kogalymavia operates five Airbus A321 passenger aircraft, according to a July news release.

The A321 is the largest version of Airbus’s single-aisle family of jetliners. It typically seats around 189 passengers, though can accommodate up to 220 in a high-density configuration. The Toulouse, France-based company recently gained approval to pack as many as 240 passengers from 2018.

Airbus narrowbodies have been involved in several recent high-profile crashes, including that of a Germanwings flight in March, apparently at the hands of a suicidal pilot killing all 150 people onboard. Late last year, an AirAsia Indonesia plane carrying 162 people crashed into the Java Sea. The crash report is still pending.

Still, the Airbus single-aisle jet family, which, along with the Boeing Co. 737 represents the backbone of global commercial airline operations, has a good safety record, with a rate of 0.10 fatal crashes per one million flights—well below many other airplane models.

The last fatal A321 accident occurred in July 2010, when a Pakistani Airblue Ltd. plane crashed killing all 152 people on board, according to the Flight Safety Foundation’s Aviation Safety Network. The accident was linked to pilot mistakes, cockpit confusion and a disregard for safety procedures.

—Robert Wall contributed to this article.

Write to Tamer El-Ghobashy at tamer.el-ghobashy@wsj.com

--

IZAKOVIC