Russia mourns for the 224 people on plane that crashed in Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula

Debris from the crashed Russian jet lies strewn across the sand at the crash site in Sinai, Egypt. All 224 people aboard the Airbus A321 which had taken off from the Red Sea resort of Sharm El Sheikh in south Sinai on Saturday morning, bound for Saint Petersburg, were killed. EPAShow less

CAIRO // International investigators have begun probing why a Russian airliner carrying 224 people crashed in a mountainous area of Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula, killing everyone on board in one of the deadliest Airbus incidents of the past decade.

As Russia on Sunday started a day of mourning for the victims, Cairo and Moscow both rejected the claim from a militant group affiliated with ISIL militants that it downed the aircraft flown by the Kogalymavia airline, operating under the name Metrojet.

Dubai-based Emirates, Germany’s Lufthansa, and Air France said they would halt flights over Sinai until the reasons behind the crash became clear.

In March, the United States federal aviation administration had advised US civil aircraft to avoid flight operations in restive Sinai Province below 7,925 metres.

Egyptian prime minister Sharif Ismail said experts had confirmed that the militants could not down a plane at the 9,000-metre altitude the Airbus A321 was flying, while Russian transport minister Maxim Sokolov said the claim “cannot be considered accurate”.

The plane’s black box data recorders have been recovered and sent for analysis, and late Saturday Mr Sokolov and emergencies minister Vladimir Puchkov arrived in Cairo with a team of experts to help with an Egyptian-led investigation.

Two air-accident investigators from France — the home country of Airbus — will also travel to Egypt along with six experts from the aerospace giant to help with the probe.

The plane, carrying 214 Russian and three Ukrainian passengers, and seven crew, lost contact with air traffic control 23 minutes after taking off from the Red Sea resort of Sharm El Sheikh, bound for Saint Petersburg.

“Unfortunately, all passengers of Kogalymavia flight 9268 Sharm El Sheikh-Saint Petersburg have died. We issue condolences to family and friends,” the Russian embassy in Cairo said.

Russia has declared Sunday a day of national mourning for the victims, who ranged in age from a 10-month-old girl to a 77-year-old woman.

Wreckage and dead bodies were found scattered over an area of six to eight square kilometres, around 100km south of the town of El Arish, Egyptian officials said.

The ISIL affiliate waging an insurgency in the Sinai claimed it brought down the plane in revenge for Russian air strikes against ISIL in Syria.

But experts rejected the idea they would have either the equipment or expertise to hit the charter flight, which an Egyptian official said was flying at some 9,144m when communication was lost.

To reach a plane at that altitude “you would need hard-to-use missiles, so it seems unlikely”, added Jean-Paul Troadec, former director of France’s BEA aviation investigation agency.

“This requires trained people and equipment that ISIL does not have, to my knowledge.”

Experts said a surface-to-air missile strike could have taken place if the aircraft had been descending, but a technical or human error were more likely. Russia has a dismal air-safety record from recent decades, and while larger carriers have started to upgrade their ageing fleets, the crash will likely raise concerns about smaller airlines like Kogalymavia.

Metrojet said the aircraft underwent safety checks last year, and Russian aviation agency Rosaviatsia said there was “no reason to consider that the cause of the disaster was a technical problem or a crew error”.

At Saint Petersburg’s Pulkovo airport, family members faced an anxious wait for news.

Ella Smirnova, 25, said she had come to meet her parents.

“I will keep hoping until the end that they are alive, but perhaps I will never see them again,” she said.