Airline News
Explosives likely culprit in A321 Sinai downing, carriers reroute
November 6th 2015
Evidence now suggests a bomb is the likely cause of last weekend's crash of the Russian Metrojet A321 over Egypt's Sinai Peninsula, killing all 224 passengers and crew on-board 20 minutes after take-off from Sharm el-Sheikh to St Petersburg. Read More »
Britain on Wednesday night cited the likely possibility of an explosive device as the cause of the crash, but made no mention of any group that may have been responsible. "We have concluded that there is a significant possibility that the crash was caused by an explosive device on board the aircraft," foreign secretary, Philip Hammond, said after a meeting of the government's crisis response committee chaired by Prime Minister David Cameron. Hammond said Britain was "advising against all but essential travel by air through Sharm el-Sheikh airport. That means that there will be no UK passenger flights out to Sharm el-Sheikh from now."
Islamic State, which controls swathes of Iraq and Syria and is battling the Egyptian army in the Sinai Peninsula, said again on Wednesday it brought down the plane and added it would eventually tell the world how it carried out the attack.
Egypt discharged the claim, saying it believed an explosion downed the A321, but what kind was not clear. “There is an examination of the sand at the crash site to try and determine if it was a bomb," an Egyptian close to the team investigating the black boxes told Reuters.
On Wednesday, the Irish Aviation Authority (IAA) directed all Irish airlines not to fly to or from the Sinai Peninsula until further notice. The Metrojet plane was registered in Ireland and the IAA is taking part in the official investigation into the crash.
Until now, the European Aviation Safety Agency (EASA) has issued no safety guidance for carriers operating in the Sinai region. However, the majority of carriers, including Lufthansa, Air France-KLM, Emirates Airline, Qatar Airways, Jazeera Airways, flydubai, Air Arabia and Gulf Air, have started re-routing their flights away from what should now be considered a conflict zone.
Etihad Airways remains the only major carrier overflying the Sinai. “Etihad Airways continues to operate flights over the Sinai Peninsula in Egypt with no evidence to suggest any ulterior motive in the tragic crash of a Russian passenger plane. However, consistent with many other airlines, Etihad is complying with instructions from the Egyptian authorities to avoid certain areas of airspace over the Sinai Peninsula, which will affect only a handful of Etihad Airways’ flights,” the carrier told This Week in Asia-Pacific Aviation in a written response Thursday night.
The International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) last week clarified the legal framework governing the roles and responsibilities of states, airlines and international organizations relating to risks to civil aviation when overflying conflict zones.
The regulator specified that a) under the Chicago Convention, only states maintain sovereign authority over their airspace, with responsibility to issue risk advisories regarding any threats to the safety of civilian aircraft operating in their airspace; b) states have authority to close their airspace where safety threats may require it; c) aircraft and airline operators are responsible for assessing global airspace risks communicated by states, and/or third parties, before deciding where they fly; d) ICAO does not possess the authority to over-ride sovereign states in order to close their airspace or reroute airline traffic; and e) with respect to conflict zone risk specifically, recommendations to assist states and airlines with a more effective means of sharing risk information were already proposed by the 2014 conflict zone risk task force which ICAO established, immediately after the loss of MH17.
