Russian plane crashed in mid-air after noise

Cockpit information from the Russian aircraft which crashed in Egypt last week was flying on auto-pilot and appeared to break up in mid-air after a sudden noise, the head of an investigation committee into the disaster said today.

But the lead investigator, Ayman al-Muqaddam, said experts were still gathering information and it was too soon to conclude what exactly brought it down. The committee head also said that the cockpit voice recording would be analysed to identify the nature of the noise, which Western governments have indicated may have been a bomb.

Islamic State militants fighting security forces in Egypt's Sinai Peninsula have said they brought down the Airbus A321, which crashed 23 minutes after taking off from the resort of Sharm al-Sheikh one week ago, killing all 224 passengers.

Fears that the crash was caused by Islamist militants led several Western countries, Russia and Turkey to suspend flights to Sharm al-Sheikh, stranding tens of thousands of holidaymakers and dealing a heavy blow to Egypt's vital tourist industry.

Muqaddam said the auto-pilot was still engaged when the crash occurred and debris were scattered over a wide area of the Sinai desert extending for 13 km (8 miles), adding that this was “consistent with an in-flight break-up”.

The black boxes recovered from the crash site showed that a “a noise was heard in the last second of the ... recording”. The recording will be send to a specialist laboratory for analysis.

Muqaddam said his team, including experts from Egypt, Russia, France, Germany and Ireland, was considering “all possible scenarios for the cause of the accident” but had not yet reached any conclusion. He said structural fatigue, a fuel explosion and even lithium batteries carried by passengers could be a cause.

Referring to media reports that Western intelligence sources believe that the plane may have been brought down by a bomb, Muqaddam said no evidence related to those claims had been provided to his team.

An Egyptian source close to the investigation of the Russian plane's black boxes said on Wednesday the cause of the crash was believed to be an explosion, but it was not clear whether that was the result of a bomb.

Western intelligence sources have said British and U.S. spies intercepted “chatter” from suspected militants suggesting that a bomb, possibly hidden in luggage in the hold, had downed the plane.

The Islamic State-affiliated Sinai Province, which claimed it brought the plane down, said it acted in revenge for Russian air strikes against Islamist fighters in Syria, where Islamic State controls large areas in the east and north of the country.