Egypt | Official says crashed Russian plane was in good shape

In this photo released by the Prime Minister’s office, Sherif Ismail, right, looks at the remains of a crashed passenger jet in Hassana, Egypt on Saturday

An Egyptian ground service official who carried out a pre-flight inspection of the Russian passenger plane that crashed in the Sinai Peninsula said yesterday that the Airbus A321-200 appeared to be in good condition.
The Metrojet plane, bound for St. Petersburg in Russia, crashed 23 minutes after it took off from Egypt’s Red Sea resort of Sharm el-Sheikh on Saturday morning. The 224 people on board, all Russian except for four Ukrainians, died.
The Egyptian official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak to the media, said he was a member of a technical inspection team that included two Russians.
“We are all shocked. It was a good plane. Everything checked out in 35 minutes,” the official told The Associated Press. The closest the plane came to being in trouble, he said, was three months ago when the pilot aborted takeoff halfway through because of a system error.
“That’s almost routine though,” he said.
However, a Russian TV channel late on Saturday quoted the wife of the co-pilot as saying her husband had complained about the plane’s condition. Natalya Trukhacheva, identified as the wife of co-pilot Sergei Trukhachev, said a daughter “called him up before he flew out. He complained before the flight that the technical condition of the aircraft left much to be desired.”
Another Egyptian official had previously said that before the plane lost contact with air traffic controllers the pilot had radioed and said the aircraft was experiencing technical problems and that he intended to try and land at the nearest airport.
A local affiliate of the extremist Islamic State group claimed it “brought down” the aircraft, but Russia’s transport minister dismissed the claim. The militants did not offer any evidence to back up their claim.
Meanwhile, Dubai-based Emirates, the Middle East’s largest carrier, said yesterday it has stopped flying over Egypt’s Sinai until more is known about the crash of the Russian airliner.
It joins two major European airlines, Germany’s Lufthansa and Air France, that announced following the crash Saturday that they would immediately stop flying over Sinai for safety reasons until the cause of the crash was determined.
The Egyptian Cabinet said yesterday that 163 bodies have so far been recovered and sent to morgues in Cairo. Brian Rohan and Nour Youssef, Sharm El-Sheikh, AP