REPORT: EgyptAir plane made 3 emergency landings in the 24 hours before it crashed

[BUSINESSINSIDER.COM]

The EgyptAir plane that mysteriously disappeared in the Mediterranean on May 19 with 66 people on board made three emergency landings in the 24 hours before the crash, the French broadcaster France 3 reports. The report has yet to be confirmed by government or airspace authorities.

The plane used for the EgyptAir Flight 804 connecting Paris to Cairo reportedly had to turn around three times and perform emergency landings on each occasion while travelling among Eritrea, Egypt, Tunisia, and Paris.

Emergency signals indicated a problem on board shortly after takeoff each time, prompting the plane to turn around, France 3 reports.

A technical verification on the ground took place after each landing, but no problems were found and the plane continually took off again and continued on its route, according to the information obtained by France 3. The French newspaper Le Parisien also reported this information.

EgyptAir’s chairman on Thursday denied that those warnings took place. “For me it is not true,” Safwat Musallam said, according to Reuters. He added that the plane had not experienced any maintenance issues before departure and that the plane was “normal.” “We fully trust the aircraft and the pilot,” he said.

This data was reported by the Aircraft Communication Addressing and Reporting System, an encrypted system that records coded messages sent between the planes and the ground during flights. This system reportedly detected several technical incidents during the plane’s last six rotations. The cause of those incidents is not yet known.

The message system is the same one that recorded a slew of messages signaling smoke coming from the lavatories the avionics bay and problems with the copilot’s windows, just before the plane disappeared off the radars and crashed.

This information could help experts who are still trying to figure out why the flight crashed, killing everyone on board. No explanation has been ruled out yet, but this could point toward a technical failure rather than a bomb explosion.

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