On the 19th of May 2016, an Airbus A320 en route from Paris to Cairo disappeared from radar at cruising altitude over the Mediterranean Sea, spiraling to its doom from 37,000 feet until it was dashed against the night-black water. What caused the loss of the EgyptAir flight and its 66 occupants should have been uncovered by a straightforward inquiry, but instead, the case quickly evolved into one of the more unnerving and unnecessary mysteries of 21st century aviation. The problem wasn’t that investigators couldn’t find the cause — it was that not all of them seemingly wanted to.
Four months into the Egyptian-led investigation, Egyptian and French experts erupted into a public dispute over whether the crash was an accident at all. Was EgyptAir flight 804 brought down by a bomb, as Egypt announced, or had a fire erupted in the cockpit, as French investigators still believed? Before the question could be properly resolved, the investigation was taken out of the hands of the accident investigators, and the regular updates suddenly fell silent. And for eight years, the crash remained an uncomfortable mystery.
That is, until now.
In October 2024, Egypt unexpectedly released a 663-page final report containing not only its own arguments in favor of an intentional explosion, but also a nearly complete French report arguing for a cause that was totally different — and frankly much scarier. Although not everything contained in this massive release is convincing, and some of it appears to be plainly untrue, these two reports contain a treasure trove of previously unseen evidence that nevertheless sheds a substantial amount of light on what happened on that fateful night over the Mediterranean, and a careful reading reveals a probable story of the demise of flight 804 — a story that can now be told for the very first time.
Great read, thanks for posting it!