224 Killed in Russian Plane Crash
November 2, 2015
Yesterday, Russia observed a day of mourning for 224 people killed in a plane crash in Egypt on Saturday, October 31. Most of the passengers were families that had been vacationing in Sharm el-Sheikh, a resort area on the Red Sea.
The Airbus A321-200 was traveling between Sharm el-Sheikh in Egypt’s southern Sinai Peninsula and Pulkovo Airport in Saint Petersburg, Russia, when it crashed 23 minutes into the flight. The airplane used for the flight, charter flight 9268, was leased by Metrojet, a Russian airline. The aircraft was at an altitude of around 30,000 feet (9,144 meters) when, according to aviation officials, it broke apart in mid-air. At the crash site, fragments of the plane and debris cover some 7.5 square miles (around 20 square kilometers).
Soon after the crash, the terrorist group Islamic State (ISIS) claimed it had shot down the plane. Some military analysts discounted this, claiming that Islamic State does not have the ground-based weapons necessary to shoot down a plane at such a high altitude. The flight downed over Ukraine in 2014, Malaysia Airlines Flight 17, was hit at about 30,000 feet with a Russian Buk missile system, but most terrorism experts felt fairly certain such weapons were not currently under ISIS’s control. As a precaution, the United States, Germany, and the United Kingdom all issued overflight warnings (warnings advising against flying over a region or country) to airlines. If terrorism was to blame for the crash, some experts believed a bomb placed on the plane before takeoff would have been more likely.
Early reports stated the plane had sent a distress call to air-traffic controllers and had requested permission to land at a nearby Egyptian airport. Later reports denied that such a call had been made. Until the flight data recorder (sometimes called a black box) and the cockpit voice recorder can be analyzed, the cause of the crash will remain unknown.
Other Behind the Headlines articles
- Malaysian Airliner Shot Down Over Ukraine (July 18, 2014)
- Missiles Down More Military Jets Over Eastern Ukraine (July 24, 2014)
- The Downing of MH17, One Year Later (July 17, 2015)
- A Dutch Report on a Tragedy (October 14, 2015)
