For five years, the reason behind the crash of an Egyptian passenger plane during its flight on May 19, 2016, from Paris to Cairo, which claimed 66 lives on board, remained unknown. Recent revelations indicate that the crash was caused by a cigarette. This cigarette resulted in the deaths of 30 Egyptian passengers, 15 from France, 2 from Iraq, and one each from Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Sudan, Algeria, Britain, Chad, Portugal, and Canada, along with a crew of 10 Egyptians, including the pilot, co-pilot, 5 flight attendants, and 3 security personnel, all of whom plunged into the Mediterranean Sea, 290 kilometers from Alexandria.
In the months following the incident, there was speculation in Egypt that the Airbus A320, operated by EgyptAir, had fallen due to an act of terrorism with unclear details. However, foreign investigations, mostly French, concluded that the crash stemmed from the airline's failure to maintain its aircraft according to international standards, a claim that Egyptian authorities firmly denied. Recent findings from the "French Bureau of Investigation and Analysis for Civil Aviation Safety" suggest that a fire broke out in the cockpit and quickly spread, leading to a loss of control of the aircraft; however, the exact cause of the fire was not identified.
According to an article by the Italian newspaper Corriere della Sera, a recent investigation by French experts indicated that the aircraft was the victim of two simultaneous factors: an oxygen mask leak from the co-pilot and a fire caused by a cigarette smoked by co-pilot Mohamed Mamdouh Ahmed Assem in the cockpit, or possibly the pilot, Mohamed Said Ali Sheqir, aged 36.
Interestingly, independent experts had almost reached similar conclusions just five days after the crash, as evidenced by a video from May 24, 2016, on YouTube, which discusses smoke emanating from the cockpit, indicating a fire had broken out there before the plane vanished from radar screens.
Furthermore, the new investigation revealed that experts detected a faint sound resembling "hissing" air, captured by the built-in microphone of the co-pilot's oxygen mask moments before the accident. They speculated that this sound resulted from a strong airflow because the mask had been switched to "emergency" mode to detect smoke or fumes in the cockpit three days prior to the incident, meaning the oxygen supply was at 100% under stable pressure, and flames erupted likely caused by a "spark or flame from a cigarette."
The investigation also detailed that the pilot had complained of feeling tired during the night flight, which took off from Charles de Gaulle Airport after 11 PM Paris time, and the aircraft disappeared from radar screens an hour and a half after take-off, while it was located in a triangular area bordered by Cyprus to the east, the Greek island of Karpathos to the west in the Aegean Sea, and the northern coast of Egypt to the south. The experts' report indicated that the crew members, including the pilot, were within their standard working hours.
