CAIRO: The final report on the crash of a Flash Airlines plane carrying French tourists two years ago off the coast of Egypt cites a failure in the automatic pilot and guiding system, the official MENA news agency said Monday. “The report points to faults in the automatic pilot and guiding system. There was not enough time for the pilot to counter the problem, the agency said, quoting an official from the civil aviation authority. Contacted by AFP, a member of the panel that investigated the Boeing 737 crash in which 148 people were killed confirmed the information but refused to provide any more details on exactly what caused the accident. He said the final report into the crash off the coast of the Red Sea resort of Sharm El-Sheikh would be published on March 25, after several delays. A French representative for the families of the 135 passengers who died in the crash on Jan. 3, 2004 will attend the press conference on publication day, MENA said. France has ruled out an attack and the head of the investigation committee, Shaker Qelada, has ruled out any wrongdoing by the pilot but the exact causes of the crash have remained unclear. Qelada said recently that the final report would not pinpoint a specific cause for the tragedy, which occurred three minutes after takeoff, but would offer a number of scenarios. Black box cabin recordings published in a preliminary report reveal a number of failures as the aircraft tried to recover from a severe bank angle, before nosediving into the Red Sea. The doomed flight was chartered by Egypt s Flash Airlines company which has since gone bankrupt. AFP
Report cites technical failure in Egypt Boeing crash
