19/05/2016 Outside Source

Hello, I'm Ros Atkins, this is Outside Source.

RANSMIT we will contrait on the disappearance of Egypt flight MS804.

We don't know what caused it to crash. One thing we know, is that it

didn't reach its destination. The flight was just 20 minutes from

landing here at Cairo International Airport when according to the

authorities it simply van Northern Irished. Without any warning or

distress call. There has been a major sea and air

search all day as Egyptian officials consider the likelihood of terrorist

involvement. Families in both Cairo and Paris

have had difficult days, waiting for news about relatives

on board. So many of you have questions about

this story, many of them can't be answered at the moment. If you use

the hashtag BBCOS we will pass any information on.

We are in a situation where we have two directly contradictory reports

Three hours ago, EgyptAir released this statement.

Egyptian Ministry of Civil Aviation had just received an official letter

from the Egyptian Ministry of Foreign Affairs that confirms

the finding of wreckage of the missing aircraft No.

But now this breaking: Senior Greek air safety official says debris

found so far in Mediterranean does not belong to an aircraft.

It's impossible for us to tell you which one of these

Answered at the moment. If you use the hashtag BBCOS we will pass any

information on. It is agrees that the Egyptian and

French Governments that the plane has come down, another significant

element, here is our transport correspondentonline, telling us the

Greek Defence Minister has talked of the plane swerving and dropping

height quickly. Other reports say the plane made a 90 degree turn left

and a 360 degree turn before it disappeared.

Let's look at what we can be sure of.

Flight MS804 left Paris at 11pm local time.

At 2.27 a signal was picked up by Greek air traffic control.

Three minutes later, Egyptian air traffic control lost

It was due to arrive in Cairo at 03.15.

The search is focusing on the area south of the Greek Island Karpathos.

This is the flight path the plane took before it went missing.

Disappears over the Mediterranean, immediately it was known it

disappeared different scenarios started to be considered.

This image is from a Nasa satellite over the area at the time -

That suggests weather is unlikely to be a factor.

It's worth noting that the plane visited Tunisia

and Eritrea on Wednesday - though we have no idea if that's

There is no suggestion that that visit is relevant to the reason that

it came down. I want to show you this. This is a video from a website

called Marine Traffic the place is marked where the plane disappeared.

If I play it on you can see the blue rectangles coming in. Each of them

represents a boat. As you see this animation continue, you get and idea

of all the boats coming from Crete and the Egyptian coast, to the

search area to help look for the plane.

Tell us what is happening now, James.

People are checking in, for flights, almost as knowledgele. If you

ignored the journalists here you would think nothing has happened in

the last 24 hours at all. Operations are continuing, and people are going

about their business, but nevertheless, the French state and

French investigators want to get to the bottom of why a plane which left

this airport, never made it to its destination. To that end we

understand tonight, that France is sending three experts from its

bureau of investigation and analysis to Egypt. It hopes that those three

experts will be able to advice, perhaps take part in the underwater

search for the flight recorders, because it is simple. If you find

the recorders you will probably find why the plane crashed. We wait the

see when those investigators get to Egypt, whether they will be taken

onboard the Egyptian team, whether they will be adviser, we know one

other French expert is going as well. A technical adviser from

Airbus itself. I am interested because of the Paris and Brussels

attacks has the level of security at the airport you are at at the moment

changed in recent months? It has, and you notice it if you are coming

in from other European country, I came in from Italy which is part of

the Schengen single border area, but our passports were checked and one

person in the line said this is Schengen, they said no, this is a

passport check and that is a new security measure that Paris had to

put in place following the attack last year. I was interested to see

reports that the Egyptians are saying they will lead this

investigation, is that something the French are comfortable with? We will

have to see. What is interesting is this, on a first day, there are a

lot of pledge, there are pledges to lead investigation, there are

pledges for people to take part, to advice, to join up. The harder

questions may come in the next few days, when, if everybody is in the

same planest place, what happens if they have to reach difficult

conclusion, what happens if one lot of people wants to interview some

people and another team says no, you cannot interview those people. I

think the French know this. It was an Egyptian plane. It has Egyptian

mostly Egyptian passenger, and the debris may in the end be sent to

Egypt itself, so France will feel it can only assist the investigation,

but I think we might expect some complicated questions between French

investigators and Egyptian investigators over the next few

hour, days possibly weeks. It is inevitable that everyone is

discussing why it came down, we must not lose sight of the fact this is a

tragedy for France, it lost a number of its citizens.

15 people including a family of four, we believe there were Algerian

French people, the father we understand was a shopkeep e he may

even have been a grocer, and his family, which had his wife and two

young children, were on a holiday. They got on that flight last night

and they never made it. So France has been having to deal with some of

the human stories as well as logistical problems of why that

plane never made it. Thank you. That is James Reynolds live from Paris.

The majority of passengers were Egyptian, and on news of the plane's

disappearance their relatives started to gather at Cairo's

International Airport. The BBC's Sally Nabil

has been there all day. She has described how families

onboard felt they weren't getting information from the authorities, we

had stills coming in from photographers working at the

airport. It is hard to imagine the anguish of the people on to the

plane have been going through, desperate for news that try to tell

them that the desperate tragedy they feel has come upon them wasn't to

be, but most of the time they weren't getting any information at

all. But it wasn't that the Egyptian aviation minister hasn't been

talking it is just he has been limited in what he can say, you will

see that, in this clip of him talking to the BBC's Quentin

Somerville. If I could ask you, do you have any

security concerns is about anyone on the plane, whether they were

passenger, crew member, on the flight deck? Nothing has been

reported about that. We haven't got any kind of security concerns about

this specific person, but don't forget that the investigation is

still going on. I am pretty sure that there are some what you call

it, there is a profiling process for people onboard, and the security

departments or the concerned security divisions, will be taking

the necessary action in this. This is that concern it is another

problem for Egyptian aviation and EgyptAir? It S I have my own

assumption, I have my own doubts, but I would like to park them all,

how do you call it, somewhere, until we reach some conclusions, What is

your principle worry? My principle worry is that, I don't want to tell

you, you dragging me to something I don't want to say. No. Quentin has

been reporting from Cairo today. We talked earlier about how the

families on of those onboard are being treated. It wasn't just a

sense of frustration, it was a sense of, of desperation, really. And you

felt it not just from the families but also from EgyptAir officials,

they, the aviation minister spoke about the, he was wearing mask, that

they were, people really were putting on a brave face, hoping

against hope, that somehow, the plane and or perhaps survivals would

have been discovered. That statement came out confirming the wreckage has

been discovered. The plane has been lost, and likely all lives wit.

EgyptAir expressing its deepest sorrow and there are still many

families here at Cairo Airport, thraeenedly backbench an enormous

blow. Blow. Even though they knew it was a slim hope they would see their

relatives again, they expected to arrive at this airport, just after

3am this morning to welcome back their family members, from from

Paris and beyond, and instead they have had to spend the entire day at

the airport and it has been bad news after bad news and the ultimate bad

news they will never return. Have the officials you have been speaking

to been willing to discuss what may have brought the plane down? No,

that is to be expected because nobody likes to speculate so early

on when they have very little information. The aviation minister

did seem to indication terrorism as he put it was the likeliest outcome.

Many people have been commenting that this plane was in good shape,

it had been checked regularly, etc,eth, so that likelihood was, was

put out there very early on, but remember, this is a country which

relies desperately on tourism, tourism from across the globe,

passengers and tourists who arrive here, principally by Aero plane and

the last six months Egypt has seen three catastrophic incidents, in

terms of its aviation, there was the bombing in Sinai which the Islamist

state took the credit for, we saw the hijacking of a plane taking to

Cyprus and now this not confirmed, this was a terrorist attack t

message we have been getting from the aviation authorities behind me

today, is that don't expect answers in a day or two, this will take

week, if not month, perhaps a year to get to the bottom to what

happened to this flight. Also remember, Egypt doesn't have a great

track record. It hasn't always co-operated with international

investigations in the past. It hasn't been straightforward because

so much of this economy's -- country's economy relies on tourism.

We have heard from James, from Quentin in Cairo, in a few minutes

we will hear from Richard Westcott and we will hear from Frank Gardner,

the BBC security correspondent as get their analysis on the appearance

of this EgyptAir flight. We are live in the BBC News room and

our lead story is the situation with this EgyptAir flight that has

disappeared. There are conflicting accounts about wreckage that has

been found near a Greek island. Egypt said it had belonged to the

missing plane. Let us bring you the latest stories from BBC World

Service. Yesterday we were reporting

that one of the Chibok Today the girl in question

met Nigeria's President She was part of a large

group of over 200 girls More heavy rain in Sri Lanka -

and it's getting in the way of the search for victims

of huge mudslides. It's feared 130 missing

people have died. To give you an idea of the scale

of these floods, some houses in capital, Colombo,

are flooded up to the rooftops. A new report is the latest to warn

that antibiotic resistant bacteria could kill someone every three

seconds by 2050. The report calls for billions

of dollars of investment to prevent modern medicine being cast back

into the dark ages. The plane that has gone missing is

an Airbus A 3200. It is one of the most common passenger planes in the

world. We understand there are over 6700 of them, in fact it is

estimated that one of these will take off somewhere in the world

every two-and-a-half seconds, now Airbus has published a statement on

its Facebook page, it says: our transport correspondent Richards

we cot has been talking to his contacts all day. He gave me his

ament of what could have causes the crash. Still everyone is saying we

don't know what caused it and people are loathe to speculate but I think

it is significant that the Egyptians are suggesting it is more likely to

be a terrorist attack than an accident and the Russians are

suggesting that as well. When you talk to security experts and crash

experts, what they say is, it is very rare, credibly rare for an

ordinary aircraft cruising at normal altitude to disintegrate and to do

it is so quickly no-one could get a Mayday message out. None of that

says this is definitely a terrorist attack, it could be an accident, we

don't know, but it does seem that things at the moment are pointing

more towards something sinister, rather than an accident. We had this

account of it turning left by 90 degrees and turning 360 degrees. Are

there any examples of planes having done that before, just before

disappearing? What I have been told that doesn't tell us much at all. If

it is officially confirmed, so people have said to me, look it

suggesting the aircraft was out of control, perhaps it was in a couple

of bits and it was going one way and another, but no-one was able to

control it. That doesn't necessarily tell you why it happened. If it did

lose height quickly, if it was veering all over the place it

suggesting something catastrophic has the happened, perhaps the tail

has come off, but it doesn't tell you why that has happened. So when I

have talked to experienced investigators they say it could be

significant but it won't tell you why, it tells you what happened. We

have talked a number of times about planes unfortunately coming down,

and viewers often ask, is it now more dangerous to be on a plane,

than in previous eras? And you have stood here and said the facts don't

bear that out. It is just as safe as it has been. It feels like we are

having these a lot. I feel like I cover a lot of these accidents. It's

a global media world of and they get attention. Attention. Statistically

it is safer to fly and that it has been. The 1259s come out but we are

seeing high profile crash, and what tends to happen is sinister things

we seem to be seeing less of mechanical failure, a bit more pilot

error and sinister things like terrorist attacks and like pilots

who decide, who have mental health problems who decide they are going

to crash the aircraft on purpose, which is what happened with German

wing, the aircraft themselves technically are safer than they have

ever been T coms are brilliant at flying them, but what you can never

legislate for is the human element. It will never be completely safe

because it is easy to target an aircraft if you were determined to

do it. The mechanics of flying, statistically safer than you have

ever been. There is speculation this plane was drought down by terrorism.

That is partly because of the Paris and the Brussels attack, carried

bout I the Islamist State group. It is also because in the last seven

months there have been two incredibly serious incidents

involving Egyptian aviation, one was in the Sinai peninsula, the other

ended up in Cyprus, let us talk about that first. Back in March,

involved another EgyptAir flight that was hijacked and forced to fly

to sigh prurks you can see it here, on the run away, after it landed. It

turned out the hijacker's suicide belt was fake, many questions were

raised about how he got onboard. You can see a picture of him with the

red circle round him, coming through security. People wanted to know how

that was possible. We get to October and that was when a Russian

passenger jet brougtz do 224 people died, and the Islamist State group

said it put a bomb onboard. So Egypt is definitely under

scrutiny on issues of security. So is France. This is the website the

French newspaper Le Figaro, in this article there are quotes from a

French border police source, saying the a investigators will be

focussing their attention on ground crew, at the airport. Now, this is

significant because bear in mind, in December, a security review at

French airports led to 70 workers having their air side security

clearance revoked. Dale long the BBC's Frank Gardner our security

correspondent has been working on this story. I want to talk to Frank

about the accounts of the plane behaving erratically in the moments

before it lost contact and what could have caused it to do that.

Really this is down to three plausible possibilities. One is

catastrophic mechanical failure that, the aeroplane systems failed

and the pilot and co-pilot were wrestling to try and bring it under

control, and obviously failed. If that was the case, two, that there

were some kind of come motion onboard, a fight, possibly somebody

trying to get into the cockpit, or over powered the pilot or take over

control of the plane. It's a possibility. I am not saying there

is any evidence but it is one of the possibilities being considered.

Three, a bomb, an explosion onboard of some kind. Not necessarily in the

cabin, could have been, who knows where, and that is something which

people are looking at very much. If it was an explosive device put

onboard, where? Where was it inserted? Was nit Paris, or was it

at one of the other airports that this plane visited in the previous

48-hours? Cairo, Tunis, Eritrea? So none of these are the fintive and

viewers shouldn't read too much into the fact I am security correspondent

and am sitting here, security or terrorism is one of the

possibilities. But a lot of us with your surprised how many places this

plane had been to in a short space of time. Time. Who would have access

to the plane during those visits and do the French authorities keep track

of those countries in advance of their plane leaving the airport.

Cleaner, flight crew and ground staff is the answer. Planes need to

be refuelled, cleaned, replenished with, you know, and services, has

the I do turn rounds, I don't know how long they are on the tarmac in

those place, so, some people have said, hang on, if you put a device

onboard a plane, surely it would have gone off before then. Not

necessarily, look at Lockerbie, the East Midlands Airport thing about

six year ago when Al-Qaeda and Yemen were able to smuggle a viable

defence in printer ink tone car fridges and put on a cargo plane

that passed through Dubai and went from Dubai to East Midlands Airport,

where it was discovered, only after a tip-off, from intelligence

agencies. Now we have confirmation the

wreckage has been found, presumably that will accelerate the

investigation, it will provide invaluable information on what could

have brought this plane down? It will give some clues, but they are

not going to know definitively what happened until they recover the

flight roareds so the cockpit voice recorder and the other black box

will need to be recovered, and they could be in anything as much as two

mile, three kilometres of deep water, the Eastern Mediterranean is

surprisingly deep. It is not as deep as the Indian Ocean but it could,

there will be will be a bleer, a transmittinger beacon that will

bleep for about a month, so they have got a month to find it. I hope

we don't have to wait that long. If it was terrorism we will almost see

a claim of responsibility before then, it may be true, it may not be.

It may be some group or other looking to cash in on what turns out

to be a mechanical failure. Thanks to Frank for that. We have a picture

of the plane itself, the one that has gone missing this is this

Airbus, used by EgyptAir, and we know that 66 people were onboard,

and of those people, 30 were Egyptians, 15 were French citizen,

two were Iraqis, and there was one person from Britain, Canada,

Belgium, Kuwait. Saudi Arabia, Algeria, Sudan Chad and Portugal. We

talked about the airports in Paris and Cairo. This is a picture of one

Egyptian minister who came to the airport to speak to relatives of

those onboard. This is the French Foreign Affairs minister who did the

same in Paris meeting those relatives at a hotel close to the

airport. To remind you, this plane took off at 11pm in the evening in

Paris it headed south-east in the direction of Cairo. It was very

close to landing but it came down south of Greece, in the

Mediterranean, lost touch with Egyptian Air Traffic Control at

2.30. Just to remind you, this is probably the most significant

element of the story at the moment. We have completely contradictory

accounts of what has happened in the Mediterranean. Today the Egyptian

Ministry of Civil Aviation saying it has confirmation that wreckage from

the plane has been found, then this from the Associated Press quoting a

security Greek official saying that debris that has been found is not

from the plane that, at the moment it is impossible for us to tell

which account we should go with. So that is some of the latest

information on this story, we will keep on covering it for the next

half an hour, I hope you can stay with me.