More about the Russian plane crash

Much of the talk onm Russian media seems to be about technical difficulties and bad maintainance although if you listen to the Australian aviation expert planes don't just drop vertically out of the sky with even double engine failure.

With the plane being out of the range of ground-to-air-missiles perhaps we should be thinking about sabotage and an explosion on board?

Russian A321 fell 'almost vertically', technical fault behind crash

From Russian TV - "Vesti"

The Latest: Wife of Russian co-pilot says her husband had complained about plane's condition

http://www.usnews.com/news/world/articles/2015/10/31/the-latest-egypt-confirms-russian-plane-crashes-in-sinai

An Egyptian search and rescue crew transfers the body of a victim of a plane crash from a civil police helicopter to an ambulance at Kabrit airport in Suez, 100 kilometers east of Cairo, Egypt, Saturday, Oct. 31, 2015. A Russian aircraft carrying 224 people, including 17 children, crashed Saturday in a remote mountainous region in the Sinai Peninsula about 20 minutes after taking off from a Red Sea resort popular with Russian tourists, the Egyptian government said. (AP Photo/Amr Nabil) 

Associated PressOct. 31, 2015 | 5:18 p.m. EDT+ More

CAIRO, Egypt (AP) — The latest news on a Russian passenger plane that crashed Saturday on a flight from Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt, to St. Petersburg, Russia.

11:15 p.m.

The wife of the co-pilot of the Russian plane that crashed in Egypt says her husband had complained about the plane's condition, according to a Russian TV channel.

State-controlled NTV ran an interview Saturday with Natalya Trukhacheva, identified as the wife of co-pilot Sergei Trukachev. She said that a daughter "called him up before he flew out. He complained before the flight that the technical condition of the aircraft left much to be desired."

An Egyptian official had previously said that before the plane lost contact with air traffic controllers the pilot had radioed and said the aircraft was experiencing technical problems and that he intended to try and land at the nearest airport.

___

7:25 p.m.

French airline Air France has decided to avoid flying over the Sinai Peninsula for safety reasons, following the crash of a Russian passenger plane in that region of Egypt.

A spokeswoman for the company said Saturday that Air France's flights will avoid the area pending the investigation "as a precaution, until further notice."

The airline will instead use other routes to the region's airports.

The decision follows a similar move by Lufthansa announced earlier Saturday.

___

6:40 p.m.

The Russian airline whose plane crashed in the Sinai region on Saturday says the aircraft was in good shape and the pilot was experienced.

In a statement on its website, Moscow-based Metrojet says the A321 received required factory maintenance in 2014.

The statement identified the captain of the plane as Valery Nemov and said he had 12,000 air hours of experience, including 3,860 in A321s.

___

6:30 p.m.

Following the crash of a Russian plane in Egypt's Sinai Peninsula, German airline Lufthansa says it will no longer fly across the area.

A spokeswoman for Lufthansa told The Associated Press that the company had decided in a meeting Saturday that the carrier would not fly over Sinai "as long as the cause for today's crash has not been clarified."

The spokeswoman said that "security is our highest priority." She spoke on condition of anonymity in line with department policy.

For the time being, the airline will instead use detours for destinations in region.

___

5:45 p.m.

The Islamic State group is claiming responsibility for bringing down the Russian Metrojet plane in Egypt's Sinai Peninsula — but it has have offered no evidence and is not known to have the capability to do so.

It is not clear what caused the plane crash Saturday morning that killed 224 people on the flight from Egypt to St. Petersburg. Egyptian officials say the pilot reported technical difficulties and wanted to make an emergency landing. The Metrojet crashed in an area where Egyptian forces have been battling an Islamic insurgency.

Russian Transport Minister Maxim Sokolov has scoffed at the IS claim, telling the Interfax news agency that such reports "must not be considered reliable."

Militants in northern Sinai have not to date shot down any commercial airliners or fighter jets but there have been media reports that they have acquired Russian shoulder-fired, anti-aircraft missiles. These missiles, however, are only effective against low-flying aircraft or helicopters.

___

5:20 p.m.

The airplane tracking site Flight Radar says current air traffic is operating normally over Egypt's restive Sinai Peninsula despite a deadly crash there earlier in the day.

Air traffic in and out of Sharm el-Sheikh was normal and a flight just took off Saturday afternoon heading to Moscow. The Egyptian resort city on the Sinai Peninsula is a favorite destination for Russian tourists

Why Russia Dismissed ISIS Claim Of Shooting Down Jet Over Egypt

Time,

31 October, 2015

Stoking fears of terrorism can be a double-edged sword

The opportunity for self-promotion seemed too tempting for the jihadis to pass up. On Saturday afternoon, hours after a Russian airliner packed with tourists crashed over Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula, killing all 224 people on board, a group of militants affiliated with the terrorist group known as the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) claimed responsibility for the tragedy.

“The fighters of [ISIS] were able to down a Russian plane over Sinai province that was carrying over 220 Russian crusaders,” said a statement from the group circulated online. “They were all killed, thanks be to God,” the statement said, according to Reuters news agency.

The claim was almost certainly bogus. Before disappearing from the radar on Saturday morning, the airliner was flying at an altitude of around 30,000 feet, far out of reach of the shoulder-fired surface-to-air missiles that militant groups in that area are known to possess. “This information cannot be seen as credible,” Russian Transport Minister Maxim Sokolovsaid in denying the claims of responsibility.

Still, the reports of an ISIS connection to the catastrophe seemed to strike a nerve in Russia. Over the past month, the Russian air force has been conducting a bombing campaign over Syria, with some of its sorties targeting the group’s positions.

In response, the terrorist group declared a “holy war” against Russia and the U.S., which is carrying out a separate military campaign against ISIS in Iraq and, now, Syria. “Islamic youth everywhere, ignite jihad against the Russians and the Americans in their crusaders’ war against Muslims,” the group’s spokesman Abu Mohammad al-Adnani said in a statement on Oct. 13, according to Reuters.
Senior officials from the U.S. have also warned that the Russian airstrikes would make it a target for terrorists. “This will have consequences forRussia itself, which is rightly fearful of attacks,” U.S. Defense Secretary Ash Carter said on Oct. 8. “In coming days, the Russians will begin to suffer from casualties,” he said during a summit of the NATO alliance in Brussels.



Four days later, Russia’s Federal Security Service, better known as the FSB,claimed to have foiled a terrorist attack in Moscow that was allegedly linked to ISIS. After detaining an undisclosed number of suspects and seizing evidence in the Russian capital on Oct. 12, the FSB said that the suspects had recently returned to Moscow from Syria and were planning to plant a bomb in the city’s subway system.

All of these reports and warnings have stoked fears of terrorism in Russia in recent weeks. A nationwide survey conducted on Oct. 17-18 showed that 65% of Russians are concerned that they or their loved ones could become the victims of a terrorist attack, up from 58% a year ago.

And in justifying the air campaign in Syria, President Vladimir Putin has played on those fears by insisting that Russia must take the fight to the militants in Syria before they manage to stage attacks on Russian soil. “We must take pre-emptive action,” Putin said in an interview aired on Russian state TV on Oct. 12. “If we just stood by and let Syria get gobbled up, thousands of people running around there now with Kalashnikovs would end up on our territory.”

After the airliner crashed on Thursday, Russia could have used the claims of responsibility from the affiliates of ISIS to stir up more public support for its bombing raids in Syria. But judging by the reports in state media, the Kremlin has chosen against that approach. Its leading news network, Vesti, devoted only a short segment to the group’s claims on Thursday afternoon, and it treated them with great suspicion. “A portable surface-to-air missile launcher cannot reach a plane flying at more than 5,000 meters,” Semyon Bagdasarov, a Moscow-based expert on Middle Eastern affairs, told Vesti in an on-air interview.

The newscast then quickly moved on to the more likely causes of the accident, focusing especially on the fact that the airliner was 18 years old and that the carrier, Kogalymavia, had a record of technical mishaps. So whatever propaganda value the Kremlin might have squeezed from the militants’ claims of responsibility, it seems unwilling to encourage the belief that ISIS could kill more than 200 Russian citizens in a ground-to-air assault.

That version of events is not just highly dubious. It also would risk drawing a dangerous link between Russia’s air campaign in Syria and the death of more than 200 Russian civilians. And by spreading that narrative, the Kremlin could find itself blamed at home for drawing the terrorists’ fire.