Flights security

Russian airline official rules out technical error as cause of crash

The break-up of a Russian passenger jet in mid-flight over the Sinai peninsula was not caused by malfunction or pilot error, the airline said Monday, deepening the mystery over the disaster but leaving open probes into some kind of plot or attack.

The latest statements in Moscow gave no indications of the direction of the investigations into Saturday’s crash that killed all 224 aboard. But Alexander Smirnov, deputy general director of the airline, insisted the tragedy could only be the result of some “mechanical impact on the aircraft.”

...If militants in the Sinai were responsible for the destruction of the Russian airliner Saturday, they could only have done so with the acquisition of a similar sophisticated weapons system — or through the placement of a bomb while the plane was still on the ground.