Court quashes new probe into 2004 Egypt crash

pulse

November 13, 2017 5:32 PM

Nearly 14 years after a Paris-bound Egyptian airliner crashed into the Red Sea, killing all 148 on board including 134 French passengers, a Paris judge has ruled out a new probe into the accident, lawyers said Monday.

The ruling was made on July 11, lawyers Jean-Pierre Bellecave and Gerard Montigny told AFP, adding that families of the victims had appealed the decision.

Prosecutors announced in January 2016 that they would not seek charges in the crash and argued that a new probe could reach no other conclusion than that human error was to blame.

The low-cost Flash Airlines flight carrying mainly French tourists plunged into the Red Sea three minutes after taking off from the resort Sharm el-Sheikh on January 3, 2004.

Prosecutors pointed to "numerous failures" including "rapid analysis resulting in bad decisions" in the crash, adding that the probe was closed because the pilots died.

Experts investigating the crash pointed out in a 2009 report that the pilots aboard were inadequately trained and suffering from fatigue due to their intense working hours in the two weeks leading up to the accident.

Flash Airlines did not even have the necessary flight manuals, the experts found.

France's aviation authority, the BEA, also blamed the pilot, who suffered from "spatial disorientation".

The families hired their own experts who assigned blame in a June 2007 report to numerous players in the tragedy, including France's air traffic civil aviation authority DGAC for not grounding the airline's planes.

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