Russian Plane Crashes in Egypt

By Ali Price Last updated Nov 16, 2015

This image released by the Prime Minister's office shows the tail of a Metrojet plane that crashed in Hassana Egypt, Friday, Oct. 31, 2015. The Russian aircraft carrying 224 people, including 17 children, crashed Saturday in a remote mountainous region in the Sinai Peninsula about 20 minutes after taking off from a Red Sea resort popular with Russian tourists, the Egyptian government said. There were no survivors.(Suliman el-Oteify, Egypt Prime Minister's Office via AP)

Photo Credit: Mashable

On October 31, 2015 a Russian plane-Metrojet 9268 was heading from the Sharm el-Sheikh airport in Egypt to St. Petersburg, Russia when it suddenly shattered into thousands of pieces, dropping to the earth. The debris is scattered over eight miles in the Sinai Peninsula and in the hands of Russian investigators. All 224 passengers of Metrojet 9268 died.

Fifty-eight investigations are currently being conducted by individuals among all involved countries trying to figure out a cause to this tragic event. Investigators are only in their first stages of investigating; it will take many weeks to find out what really happened on October 31 on flight Metrojet 9286.

On November 7 all members of the primary investigative group in Egypt, led by Ayman al-Muqaddam, met to discuss Metrojet 9268 and the event that took place on October 31. The group had the cockpit voice recording, and took the time to carefully analyze it. They were focusing on a sound they heard in the last second of the voice recording.

While many people arrived at the conclusion that the sound they heard was a bomb, Muqaddam kept an open mind, considering all the possibilities, and believing that it could really be anything: “a lithium battery explosion in a passenger’s luggage, a fuel tank explosion, or a fuselage fatigue.” Russia, France, Germany, and Ireland are also conducting investigations.

European investigators who also analyzed the plane’s cockpit voice recorder and flight data recorder said they believe that the crash was not an accident. The investigators said the cockpit voice recorder indicated an explosion, and the data recorder showed that the blast was not an accident.

Russia has put a request out to the U.S. to assist them in a forensic analysis. The FBI is committed to assisting Russia in this investigation, but emphasizes that it has no plans to send a team into the region. Russia and the U.S have not worked together since the fall of the Berlin Wall. Russia’s reaching out to the U.S. could serve geopolitical interests.

Vladimir V. Putin has been trying to control the issue of terrorism and the global threat it represents in order to end the isolation and sanctions imposed by the West over the Ukraine crisis. Russian investigators have not put out many statements surrounding the progress of their investigative work, where their U.S. counterparts put out a statement on November 7 indicating that they are 99.9 percent sure that the plane was brought down by a bomb. All investigations are still underway and could take several weeks to conduct before a conclusion is reached. With the collaboration of numerous countries, organizations, and resources; a conclusion will hopefully be reached soon.

The vast majority of passengers on Metrojet flight 9268 were Russian while others were of Ukrainian, Belarus or unconfirmed citizenship. CNN produced an article and commented that many of the people on the flight were couples who traveled to Sharm el-Sheikh for vacations. Many of their children are now orphans.