The Russian airline, Kogalymavia, has blamed “external influence” for Saturday’s Sinai plane crash which killed 224 people.
The only reasonable explanation for the crash of a Russian passenger jet in Egypt is “an external influence,” an executive from the airline that operated the flight said on Monday, stressing that planes don’t just break apart mid-air.
An investigation by aviation experts using data from the aircraft’s “black boxes” has yet to give its conclusions.
Director of the Airline, which was later renamed Metrojet, ruled out a technical fault and pilot error.
“The only explanation for the plane to have been destroyed in mid-air can be specific impact, purely mechanical, physical influence on the aircraft”, Alexander Smirnov said.
“There is no such combination of failures of systems which could have led to the plane disintegrating in the air,” he added.
A Kremlin spokesman had also warned against speculation as to the possible causes of the crash.
“We cannot exclude any version. The investigation is only beginning. We do not know yet what its main focus will be,” he told the BBC.
Russian President, Vladimir Putin had, however, described the crash as an “enormous tragedy” and expressed his condolences to the families of the victims.
“Without any doubt, everything must be done to create an objective picture of events so that we know what happened and can react accordingly,” he said.
The executive was not specific about what he meant by an external influence. Experts said that it is too early to know for certain what caused the plane to break up at the start of what could be a lengthy investigation.
Smirnov added that the crew did not issue any warnings or communications during the final moments, indicating that the flight crew must have been disabled and not able to radio out.
He, however, said that while the plane’s flight and voice data recorders had been recovered, they had not been read or decoded.
