No Evidence of Explosion Yet on Missing EgyptAir
Jum'at, 20 Mei 2016 - 11:22 WIB
No Evidence of Explosion Yet on Missing EgyptAir
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WASHINGTON - US government has found no indications of an explosion yet, but agencies continue to review their systems and satellites that monitor Mediterranean activity to determine whether there is any sign of one at the time of the EgyptAir crash.
“I’m not aware of any sensors that the U.S. military has or deploys -- air or maritime -- that picked anything up on this,” State Department Spokesman, John Kirby.
“I’m not aware of any capturing through electronic means… of either imagery, audio, or any other electronic transmissions, that would lead us to have any greater clarity about what happened,” he said.
CNN’s Laura Koran and Jim Sciutto report that Peter Cook, the spokesman for the Pentagon, said the investigation is still in its early phase.
“If we have any information that could potentially be helpful. We will be, of course, happy to provide it in the future," said Cook,
Meanwhile, Egypt’s investigation faces difficult obstacles to finding out what exactly brought down MS804, including basic coordination with other nations.
Egypt will lead the probe with the help of officials from France, where the 12-year-old jet was built and which had the second-largest number of people on board after Egypt, Ayman al-Moqadem, head of Egypt’s air accident agency, said.
A French minister said three investigators from the BEA air crash investigation agency were on their way to Egypt, together with an expert from Airbus.
There was no immediate word on whether the United States, where engine maker Pratt & Whitney is based, would take part. Under global aviation rules, the country that produced the engines can expect to take part in an air crash investigation.
But a US official said US agencies there fear Egypt will try to keep American investigators at arms length due to historical tensions which date back to the crash of EgyptAir 990 off the US coast in 1999.
Relations between Egyptian and US aviation agencies have been tense since US investigators publicly concluded that a suicidal co-pilot deliberately crashed the Boeing 767.
Egyptian investigators accused the National Transportation Safety Board of twisting evidence to support its suicide theory and produced their own report citing technical problems.
Relations also appeared cool following the bombing of a Russian jet equipped with similar engines over Sinai in October.
“I think certainly during the early and even middle part of that investigation ... a lot of our people were kept at arm’s length,” U. House Intelligence Committee member Adam Schiff told MSNBC.
Safety experts said Egypt had moved noticeably more quickly this time to discuss possible causes including terrorism, though other technical flaws or human error could not be ruled out.
“This is going to be a difficult investigation,” a former investigator familiar with the region said.
Egypt said investigators would start searching for black boxes and gather evidence as soon as the crash site was found.
France’s BEA is expected to play a major role in the underwater hunt after leading the search for an Air France jet that crashed in the Atlantic in 2009 and an Egyptian jet that crashed off Sharm el-Sheikh in 2004, killing French tourists.
“I’m not aware of any sensors that the U.S. military has or deploys -- air or maritime -- that picked anything up on this,” State Department Spokesman, John Kirby.
“I’m not aware of any capturing through electronic means… of either imagery, audio, or any other electronic transmissions, that would lead us to have any greater clarity about what happened,” he said.
CNN’s Laura Koran and Jim Sciutto report that Peter Cook, the spokesman for the Pentagon, said the investigation is still in its early phase.
“If we have any information that could potentially be helpful. We will be, of course, happy to provide it in the future," said Cook,
Meanwhile, Egypt’s investigation faces difficult obstacles to finding out what exactly brought down MS804, including basic coordination with other nations.
Egypt will lead the probe with the help of officials from France, where the 12-year-old jet was built and which had the second-largest number of people on board after Egypt, Ayman al-Moqadem, head of Egypt’s air accident agency, said.
A French minister said three investigators from the BEA air crash investigation agency were on their way to Egypt, together with an expert from Airbus.
There was no immediate word on whether the United States, where engine maker Pratt & Whitney is based, would take part. Under global aviation rules, the country that produced the engines can expect to take part in an air crash investigation.
But a US official said US agencies there fear Egypt will try to keep American investigators at arms length due to historical tensions which date back to the crash of EgyptAir 990 off the US coast in 1999.
Relations between Egyptian and US aviation agencies have been tense since US investigators publicly concluded that a suicidal co-pilot deliberately crashed the Boeing 767.
Egyptian investigators accused the National Transportation Safety Board of twisting evidence to support its suicide theory and produced their own report citing technical problems.
Relations also appeared cool following the bombing of a Russian jet equipped with similar engines over Sinai in October.
“I think certainly during the early and even middle part of that investigation ... a lot of our people were kept at arm’s length,” U. House Intelligence Committee member Adam Schiff told MSNBC.
Safety experts said Egypt had moved noticeably more quickly this time to discuss possible causes including terrorism, though other technical flaws or human error could not be ruled out.
“This is going to be a difficult investigation,” a former investigator familiar with the region said.
Egypt said investigators would start searching for black boxes and gather evidence as soon as the crash site was found.
France’s BEA is expected to play a major role in the underwater hunt after leading the search for an Air France jet that crashed in the Atlantic in 2009 and an Egyptian jet that crashed off Sharm el-Sheikh in 2004, killing French tourists.
(rnz)
