Russian pilot may have been unconscious before plane crashed

The Russian airline said the Airbus A321 passenger plane that crashed in Egypt last weekend was hit by an external force while in flight and the pilot completely lost control.

The crew of Flight 7K9268 appeared to have been unconscious before the plane rapidly lost altitude and crashed into the Sinai Peninsula on October 31, RT quoted Viktor Yung, deputy director of Kogalymavia (Metrojet) airline, the operator of the plane, as saying.

"When the catastrophic incident began to happen, the crew members were unconscious. This explains why they did not try to contact the air traffic control station and report everything," Mr. Yung commented.

An Egyptian military helicopter flies over the site of a Russian plane crash in the Hassana area of ​​Arish city, Egypt. Photo: Reuters.

The airline believes that a strong external force on the plane's structure may have caused the disaster. "The most likely explanation is that the plane was subjected to mechanical stress," said Aleksand Smirnov, who oversees the Kogalymavia fleet. "There is no combination of system failures that could have caused the plane to break apart in the air."

According to Mr. Smirnov, the crashed plane was in "very good" condition before departure and "ruled out the possibility of a technical fault or crew error".

Investigators said they were looking into all scenarios including human error, technical failure or criminal activity.

"It would be wrong to make any preliminary predictions or verbal statements without any basis," Dmitry Peskov, spokesman for Russian President Vladimir Putin, said today. "Let the investigators first come up with at least some results." Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev called for a detailed investigation into the incident.

The Metrojet Airbus A321 passenger plane, traveling from the Egyptian resort city of Sharm el-Sheikh to St Petersburg, Russia, crashed on October 31 just 23 minutes after takeoff. All 224 people on board, mostly Russians, died, making it the worst disaster in Russian aviation history.

According to VNE