IT is inevitable that the disappearance of EgyptAir’s flight MS804 from Paris to Cairo was immediately being blamed on terrorism. Both France and Egypt have found themselves in the frontline of the struggle against Daesh (the self-proclaimed IS) and have already paid a high price in the loss of lives to these vicious killers.
French Foreign Minister Jean-Marc Ayrault visited Paris’ Charles De Gaulle airport from which the flight left on Wednesday night and said that nothing was confirmed and that everyone should be extremely prudent with regard to what had happened. With every such disappearance of an airliner, catastrophic mechanical or structural failure cannot be ruled out.
Nevertheless, aircraft design, testing and safety standards have made such disasters very much the exception. The lost aircraft, an Airbus A320, is a proven medium-haul workhorse of the skies with which there have been no major technical failures.
The fact that it was such a hard-working aircraft is demonstrated by its movements before it disappeared, movements which are hugely complicating the investigation into the possibility that a bomb was somehow smuggled aboard at some point. On Wednesday, it flew from Asmara in Eritrea to Cairo, then it was used immediately for a return flight to Tunis before embarking on Wednesday afternoon for Paris. It was early on Thursday morning as the airliner entered Egyptian airspace on its return from the French capital that it disappeared over the Mediterranean.
The average depth of the Mediterranean is 1,500 meters. There is, therefore, a reasonable chance that the wreckage will be located and the two flight recorders recovered, which will provide key evidence of what happened to the flight.
But no less effort will now be expended in investigating precisely what happened in and around the plane during its travels between Eritrea, Egypt, Tunisia and France. The French are particularly concerned that an explosive device could have been put on board during the turnaround in Paris on Wednesday night. The authorities have vowed that everyone who could have possibly come near the plane while it was on the ground will be thoroughly checked out.
Then there is the possibility that among the 66 passengers and crew there was a suicide bomber. Given the stringent security checks at all airports in advanced countries, the chance that a passenger managed to find a way to smuggle aboard the means of destroying the aircraft will be of considerable concern. After the Brussels airport attack, the French upped their airport security. Passenger-profiling was introduced which, although unpleasant for Muslims and people of Middle Eastern appearance, was supposed to cut to the minimum the chances that the lives of innocent passengers could be endangered by a fanatical suicide bomber.
It is often the case that more than one terrorist group will claim responsibility for an event where the causes have yet to be established. Such lies comes easily to amoral bigots who would have carried out the attack had they been able. Also multiple claims are designed to confuse investigators.
Whatever the truth that is finally established over the fate of flight MS804, it seems clear that Egypt and its national carrier have been dealt a heavy blow. With tourism revenues plunging in Egypt, as in Tunisia following the Bardo and Sousse massacres, the loss of this EgyptAir plane seems sure to further spook foreign visitors.
