CAIRO / SAINT PETERSBURG: A Russian passenger plane that crashed in the Sinai Peninsula of Egypt broke in the air, an official aviation agency based in Moscow, said on Sunday after visiting the disaster site, but He stressed that it was too early to draw conclusions from this.
The Russian authorities also ordered Kogalymavia airline, operator of the Airbus A321 that came down on Saturday killing all 224 people on board, fly their airplanes of the same model until the causes of the accident are known.
The plane, Kogalymavia flew under the Metrojet brand, carrying tourists from the town of Red Sea Sharm el-Sheikh to St. Petersburg when it crashed in a mountainous area of central Sinai shortly after losing radar contact near the altitude cruise.
"The destruction occurred in the air, and the fragments were scattered over a wide area of about 20 square kilometers," said Viktor Sorochenko, director of the Intergovernmental Aviation Committee.
However, he cautioned against reading anything on this information. "It's too early to talk about conclusions," he said on Russian television in Cairo.
The Moscow-based committee representing the governments of the Commonwealth of Independent States, which groups Russia and other former Soviet republics.
Egyptian analysts began to examine the contents of the two recorders "black box" recovered the plane although the process as a source of civil aviation, could take days.
However, Russian Transport Minister Maxim Sokolov told Russia 24 television that this work had not yet begun.
Russian duel stacked tall flowers in memory of their dead compatriots. Mourners in Moscow candles arranged to spell 7K-9268, the number of flight that crashed.
Carriers United Arab Emirates, Qatar, Bahrain and Kuwait said they would re-route flights over Sinai as a safety measure until there was more clarity. Abu Dhabi's Etihad Airways said it will continue to fly over the peninsula, but avoid the airspace over certain areas on the board of the Egyptian authorities.
Months of consultations
A member of the militant group calling itself Islamic state (IS) in Egypt, he said in a statement that shot down the plane "in response to Russian air attacks that killed hundreds of Muslims in Syrian territory", but Sokolov told the Interfax news agency the claim "can not be considered accurate."Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi said it could take months to establish the truth behind the accident, although his country was cooperating with Russia to facilitate investigations.
"This is a complicated issue and requires advanced technologies and extensive research that could take months," Sisi said in a televised speech on Sunday.
The remains were found in a desolate area of stony ground.
Rescuers had collected the colorful suitcases of passengers in a stack. Child sandal pink decorated with white flowers lay in the rubble, a reminder that 17 children were among the dead on their way home from holiday.
Parts of the wreckage were blackened and charred, with a section forming piles of twisted metal, although Metrojet blue logo was still visible on the broken tail fin.
As Russian investigators moved slowly through the site, Egyptian military helicopters hovered, combing the wider area for debris and bodies ─ ─ not yet found.
Bodies of crash victims arrive in Russia Egypt
A plane carrying the remains of dozens of people who died when a Russian passenger plane crashed in Egypt landed in St. Petersburg early Monday an AFP correspondent at the scene said.The aircraft, the first to bring back the bodies of those who died when the flight crashed Kogalymavia in the Sinai Peninsula, arrived at Pulkovo airport in the country's second largest city at about 0300GMT.
Russian authorities confirmed that 144 bodies were aboard the plane. Egypt had previously said it would transport the remains of 162 people.
The remains were to be taken in a convoy of a crematorium in St. Petersburg for identification, which will begin later on Monday, according to the Ministry of Emergencies of Russia, who organized the flight.
Family members have been providing DNA samples in a crisis center set up near the airport, now the site of a makeshift memorial where people are bringing flowers and stuffed animals to commemorate the victims, many of them children as young as 10 months old .
Most of those killed were tourists from St. Petersburg and the surrounding region, they should go home at noon Saturday from the popular Egyptian resort of Sharm el-Sheikh.
Reasons for the accident are still unknown and an international group of researchers were working with the Egyptian authorities.
Senior Russian aviation have said the plane disintegrated in the air, and the head of the Russian air transport agency Alexander Neradko on Sunday said it appeared the plane disintegrated at high altitude.
"All signs show that the structure of the aircraft disintegrated in the air at high altitude," he told Russian state television on Sunday night.
Interstate Aviation Committee head Viktor Sorochenko, who has been working in Egypt, said "a first glance showed that so far can not rule out any theory".
Earlier, at least 163 bodies had been recovered and transported to various hospitals including Zeinhom morgue in Cairo, according to a cabinet statement.
Airport security sources said that Russian experts arrived on Saturday brought with them refrigerators and DNA samples to help identify and bring home the dead.
A source in the morgue said that the bodies had been numbered using bracelets, ready to be received by the Russians, and ambulances were arriving empty to pick them up.
Those aboard the doomed flight 214 Russians included at least three Ukrainian and Belarusian, most back from Red Sea popular among Russians seeking winter sun.
The Russian flag was flying at half mast on the country's embassy in Cairo on Sunday morning. President Vladimir Putin has declared a day of national mourning in Russia.
Russia's transport regulator said in a statement it had grounded Airbus A321 Kogalymavia until the reasons for the fall was clear.
Russian transport prosecutors have examined the quality of fuel used by the plane and found to meet the requirements, the state news agency RIA of Russia said.
The crew had also recently undergone medical tests and no problems were detected, Interfax reported.
Airbus experts have begun arriving to Egypt to assist in the investigation, the civil aviation ministry said.
Search Resumes
Emergency services and aviation specialists early on Sunday resumed their search of the crash site, which are spread over 15 square kilometers, with 100 Russian emergency workers helping to recover bodies and gather evidence.Russia, an ally of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad launched airstrikes against opposition groups in Syria including SE on September 30
Sinai is the scene of an insurgency by militants near IS, which have killed hundreds of Egyptian soldiers and police, and have also attacked Western targets in recent months. Much of the Sinai is a restricted military zone.
Militants in the area is not believed to have missiles capable of hitting a plane at 30,000 feet.
IS websites have in the past claimed responsibility for the actions that have not been conclusively attributed to them. Officials say there is no evidence to suggest so far that a bomb could have brought down the plane.
Three companies based in the United Arab Emirates airlines ─ Emirates, Air Arabia and flydubai ─ said on Sunday they were re-routing of flights to avoid flying over the Sinai.
Two of the largest companies in Europe, Lufthansa and Air France-KLM, have already said they avoid flying over the peninsula waiting for an explanation of the cause.
Sherif Fathy, Chairman of EgyptAir, said the national carrier had not taken such action. "I heard some other companies may be doing this, but I think it is justified," he said.
The A321 is a medium-haul aircraft in service since 1994, with more than 1,100 worldwide in operation and a good safety record. It is a highly automated aircraft rely on computers to help pilots stay within the limits of safe flight.
Airbus said the A321 was built in 1997 and had been operated by Metrojet since 2012. He had flown 56,000 hours in nearly 21,000 flights.
The plane took off at 05:51 am Cairo time and vanished from radar screens 23 minutes later, said the Ministry of Civil Aviation of Egypt in a statement. It was at an altitude of 31,000 feet when it disappeared from radar screens.
According Flightradar24 a flight tracking service based in Sweden authorized, the plane was descending rapidly to about 6,000 feet per minute when the signal air traffic control was lost.
