EgyptAir 804 plane's smoke detectors went off before crash
As families wait for news, French investigators probe airline and airport staff backgrounds
Egyptian officials are investigating reports that smoke detectors went off on Egypt Air Flight 804 shortly before it crashed in the Mediterranean on Thursday.
French investigators are not drawing conclusions about the cause of the crash, but say there were indications of a fire on board the Airbus A320.
Families of the 66 people killed in the crash gathered at the French foreign ministry in Paris hoping for news. Adtea Saleh, president of the Egyptian community in France, said a two-year-old travelling with her father was among the victims.
They met with French Foreign Minister Jean-Marc Ayrault who warned them not to pay heed to the sometimes contradictory information circulating about the crash.
"I told them that France has put at the disposal of the Egyptian authorities all the means available to advance the search for the plane and the victims," he said.
"Investigators from BEA (Bureau of Inquiry and Analysis) have already arrived in Cairo yesterday afternoon to take part in the investigation which has been opened by Egypt. We have also sent an aeroplane and a navy boat to contribute in the search."
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A spokesman for the French air accident investigation service says smoke was detected in multiple places on board the aircraft before it went down in the Mediterranean Sea.
Life jackets, seat cushions found
Sebastien Barthe says the type of messages sent by the plane's automatic detection system usually indicate the start of a fire. But he cautioned that the cause of the crash that killed all 66 on board remains unclear.
"We are drawing no conclusions from this. Everything else is pure conjecture," he said on Saturday.
The uncertainty over what brought down Flight 804 makes the search for the plane's black box critical, Ayrault told families.
The crash site is between the Greek Island of Karpathos and the Egyptian Port of Alexandria, but as the search entered a third day, the search area was being expanded to account for changes in wind and ocean current.
Countries including the United Kingdom, France, the United States and Cyprus joined the search with the support of Greek military bases in the area.
Looking for clues to whether terrorists may have brought down the Airbus A320, investigators have been poring over the passenger list and questioning ground crew members at Charles de Gaulle Airport in Paris, from which the plane took off.
The respected industry website The Aviation Herald has published automatic alerts transmitted by the Airbus 320.
In short succession, they indicate the opening of a cockpit window, smoke in a lavatory and smoke underneath the flight deck in the electronics bay.
Further messages also suggest problems with the flight controls computer.
Aircraft systems shut down in 3 minutes
"Over a period of three minutes, the aircraft system shut down," said the editor of Aviation Security International magazine, Philip Baum.
"That's starting to indicate that it probably wasn't a hijacking. There probably wasn't a struggle in the cockpit. It's more likely a fire on board," he said. "Now, whether that was a technical fire, a short circuit, or whether it was because a bomb went off on board, we don't know."
Egypt Air flight 804 was flying from Paris to Cairo with 66 people on board, including two Canadians, when the aircraft went missing.
Wreckage of the plane, as well as human remains and suitcases, were spotted floating in the Mediterranean Sea on Friday, according to Greek and Egyptian officials.
The Egyptian ministry of defence released photographs on Saturday showing debris believed to be from the plane. The images show heavily damaged seats, life jackets and other wreckage found 290 kilometres north of Alexandria.
Search and recovery teams are still looking for the downed plane's black boxes.
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The devices will emit pings for only 28 more days and officials say that to get an accurate signal from those pings, a boat has to be virtually on top of the wreckage.
Finding pieces of the fuselage is a challenge with parts of the Mediterranean 3,000 metres deep.
The Greek defence minister, Panos Kammenos, said the plane swerved wildly shortly after leaving Greek airspace and entering Egyptian airspace and then disappeared from radar screens.
The Airbus A320 had been cruising normally in clear skies on a nighttime flight to Cairo early Thursday when it suddenly lurched left, then right, spun all the way around and plummeted 38,000 feet (11,582.4 metres) into the sea, never issuing a distress signal.
No militant group has claimed to have brought down the aircraft. That is a contrast to the downing of a Russian jet in October over Egypt's Sinai Peninsula that killed all 224 on board. In that case, the Islamic State group's branch in Sinai issued a claim of responsibility within hours.
On Friday, ISIS issued a statement on clashes with the Egyptian military in Sinai, but said nothing about the plane crash.
With files from The Associated Press