No theories ruled out on EgyptAir crash after smoke report: Paris

Paris — French Foreign Minister Jean-Marc Ayrault said Saturday that no theory on the cause of the EgyptAir crash has been ruled out, after revelations of smoke in the cabin minutes before the disaster. “At this time... all theories are being examined and none is favoured,” he told a news conference after meeting with relatives of passengers who were aboard the doomed A320 which left Paris early Thursday for Cairo. “The reports circulating here and there, which by the way are sometimes contradictory, give rise too often to nearly definitive conclusions,” Ayrault said, warning of the “painful tension” caused to the families of the victims. “Finding the plane is of course the priority, along with finding the black boxes to analyse them, which will allow us to answer legitimate questions,” he said, referring to the voice and flight data recorders. France’s “dual goal” is to offer “solidarity with the families but also transparency... on the circumstances of this plane’s disappearance,” said the foreign minister, who was joined by Egypt’s ambassador to France at the meeting with the family members. The passengers included 30 Egyptians, 15 French citizens, two Iraqis, two Canadians, and citizens from Algeria, Belgium, Britain, Chad, Portugal, Saudi Arabia and Sudan. They included a boy and two babies. Seven crew members and three security personnel were also on board. Looking for clues to whether terrorists may have brought down the Airbus A320, investigators have been poring over the passenger list and questioned ground crew members at Charles de Gaulle Airport in Paris, from which the plane took off. The aircraft had been cruising normally in clear skies on a nighttime flight to Cairo early Thursday when it suddenly lurched left, then right, spun all the way around and plummeted 38,000 feet (11,582.4 meters) into the sea, never issuing a distress signal. Search crews, meanwhile, are scouring for further wreckage of the aircraft. Experts said answers will come only with an examination of the wreckage and the plane’s cockpit voice and flight data recorders, commonly known as black boxes. Planes and vessels from Egypt and five other countries — Greece, Britain, France, the United States and Cyprus — continued searching a wide area of the eastern Mediterranean on Saturday, a day after the Egyptian military found debris from the passenger jet in the sea 180 miles (290 kilometers) north of the Egyptian port city of Alexandria. The waters in the area are 8,000 to 10,000 feet deep (2,440 to 3,050 meters), and the pings from the black boxes can be detected up to a depth of 20,000 feet (6 kilometers). On Saturday, the Egyptian military posted new photos of debris on its spokesman’s Facebook page. They included what appeared to be parts of a seat, a lifejacket and what looks to be a pink and purple children’s blanket. Egyptian authorities said they believe terrorism is a more likely explanation than equipment failure, and some aviation experts have said the erratic flight suggests a bomb blast or a struggle in the cockpit. But so far no hard evidence has emerged.