Crash flight recorder 'too deep'

[frogfromthenorth2]

http://edition.cnn.com/2004/WORLD/meast/01/06/egypt.crash/index.html

"The Flash Airlines jet, carrying 148 people, crashed into the Red Sea Saturday shortly after takeoff. Of those killed, 133 were French, and the French government has responded by providing search crews and equipment to aid the Egyptian government in recovery efforts. "

SNIP

"We have no objective reason to think it was a criminal act," he said. "We have technical and visual information from witnesses that make us think it was an accident. But now we have to find out why.""

[karlschneider]

1. 700 meters is nothing. There are plenty of submersibles & ROVs that

can go to 10000M.

[frogfromthenorth2]

2. Yeah...but the French...you know how Sissy than can be...

[Cannikin]

3. Ok...if Ballard could find the Titanic back in the early '80s.......

I think we could get that box! What kind of B.S. is this?

[frogfromthenorth2]

4. Hey..The Titanic was HUGE....and that box is small and BLACK!!!

(Doh...It's ORANGE....hum...orange my favorite color....)

[okieinpain]

7. and what's wrong with being black....

just joking.

[cthrumatrix]

5. maybe they don't want you to know whats in it...?

[worldgonekrazy]

8. My thoughts exactly

"Too deep" my ass.

[Dookus]

10. Actually....

700 Meters *IS* really deep. Far, far too deep for divers.

And it's not comparable to the Titanic, which was a giant ship. This is a small box.

I suppose given many millions of dollars, it COULD be found, but it would be an enormous effort.

on edit: Furthermore, I don't know of any submersibles that are capable of cutting through a plane fuselage to find something.

[karlschneider]

6. Oh, yeah...I forgot when they threw rose petals at the Bastille a while

back.
:evilgrin:

[daleo]

9. Has claim about French head scarves been reported here?

I haven't seen anything on LBN yet, but the Globe and Mail reported this morning that an Egyptian group claimed that they took down this airliner with a shoulder fired missile, supposedly in retaliation for the French government's ban on head scarves for Muslim girls in the French school system.

It seemed pretty unlikely to me (the motive, if not the possibility of a missile taking the plane down), but who knows. Religious zealots often seem to have strong obsessions about what people put on their heads, or how they wear their hair. Of course, it might also be disinformation on some group's part.

[toodles_oduff]

11. The "head scarf" connection

I wondered about that possibility when I read that the passengers were French. Chirac made a big announcement about the ban and I guess such a policy could piss off an Islamic fundamentalist. But to the point of taking out an entire jetliner? We'll probably never know for sure.

[daleo]

12. Here is something else on this terrorist "headscarf" claim

I tried the Globe and Mail site, but the story just hung up my browser (maybe it has been scrubbed). I have the paper version delivered, so that is where I first saw mention of this angle. Anyway, here it is from a different source. Take it with a large grain of salt.

Ansar El-Haq Claims Responsibility For Egyptian Plane Crash
Jan 06, 2004
Source: Albawaba.com

A man claiming to represent an Islamic group in Yemen said on Monday the Egyptian charter plane that crashed Saturday was brought down in an "attack" by the group's members, in a telephone call to AFP.

The man, who said he was an Egyptian calling from Cairo, said he spoke on behalf of a group dubbed Ansar el-Haq (the Apostles of Truth), which he said carried out an attack that brought down the plane. Ansar el-Haq is based in Yemen, he said.

snip

The caller also warned that his group would launch an attack "soon" against Air France "if France does not go back on its decision to prohibit the Islamic headscarf" in state schools. (Albawaba.com)

[pinniped]

13. If man/woman has been to the deepest depths of the ocean (11km)...

then surely there is some mechanism in place to retrieve a black box from a mere 600-800m.

[daleo]

14. Globe and Mail link/article re: plane crash, terrorist claim, head scarves

I am doubtful about whether this Globe link will work (I am a bit of a newbie about these long links), so I will also clip the allowable 4 paragraphs. It is interesting that the Globe and Mail (Canada's paper of record) was treating this so seriously yesterday

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20040106.wegyptair0106/BNStory/International/?query=crash

Jet-crash mystery deepens


By PAUL KORING
From Tuesday's Globe and Mail

Egyptian authorities were quick to blame unspecified technical problems, but a previously unknown Islamic group claimed yesterday that it had downed the airliner and several aspects of the crash raised troubling questions. Several other Boeing 737s have crashed after suffering rudder malfunctions at low altitudes.

A caller saying he represented a radical Islamist group in Yemen, Ansar el-Haq (Apostles of Truth) telephoned Agence France-Presse in Cairo to say the aircraft had been downed in an "attack."

The caller warned of future attacks against Air France flights unless the French government rescinded a law that bans Muslim students from wearing headscarves in public schools.

snip

A heat-seeking missile, homing in on one of the two jet engines, could cripple the aircraft without the relatively small warhead damaging the fuselage.