The Russian Crash in Sinai, There are Still Accidents But…

By Gordon Duff, on October 31, 2015

Today we walk the balance between "accident" and "state terrorism"

Family members wait though nothing they want to hear will ever be said

Yesterday, we received warnings that an American plane would be shot down over Syria and blamed on the Russians accompanied by a transcript of the plans being made.  Today a Russian airliner carrying over 200 passengers plunged to the ground after reading 31,000 feet, something atypical for airline crashes.  Planes seldom hit cruising altitude and develop mechanical problems.

The plane had just flown over Israeli/ISIS controlled territory when the mishap developed.  There are still mechanical problems with planes, this one an 18 year old, not that old, an Airbus 321 filled with Russian vacationers returning from Egyptian beaches to St. Petersburg.

However, there are lots of ways to bring down aircraft, hacks, little explosive devices and such and a recent history filled with games tied to aircraft crashes, particularly involving Malaysian Airlines as everyone is aware.

Here is the rub, bringing down aircraft filled with innocent civilians is a typical form of state terrorism.  America has used it against Iran, we are told Libya used it against the US (and Scotland) but that issue has never been settled to anyone’s satisfaction.  We lost a Polish president on a crash over Russia which Russia has been accused of causing though the political upheavals in the region would put my money on NATO as the culprit, opinion only.

Russia brought down a Korean airlines 747, we could go on forever, simply mentioning the crashes and “downings” that we are supposed to know of.

Never take an airline crash at face value.  Never take an airline crash near a combat zone at face value.  Always look for an angry nation state “player” looking for revenge, Israel certainly qualifies but with the current command bifurcation in the US, they aren’t above involvement either.

If one were to look at the airport personnel at Sharm el Sheikh, where the ill fated flight began, would one find penetration by foreign intelligence services or Egyptian personnel on the payroll of Saudi Arabia?

Let’s take a look at Saudi Arabia.  The Saudi king and Saudi foreign minister are continually either visiting Moscow or on the phone with Putin or Lavrov.  Yesterday’s conference in Vienna which put Iran and Saudi Arabia at the same table didn’t come up with a comprehensive settlement but the items that were settled went very much the wrong way for Saudi Arabia.

All of the groups the Saudis are supporting with cash and advanced weapons will be on the terror list and subject to obliteration by the 19 nation coalition.  When Saudi continues sending in weapons, and they will certainly do that, eventually they will run afoul of Russia for certain and, weak though this has become, public opinion around the world.

The holocaust in Yemen has already stained Saudi Arabia beyond redemption anyway.

Would they have plotted against Russia and brought down this aircraft?  The answer is a resounding yes.  Are there factions in Saudi Arabia that would use this against not only Russia but the current king who is seen as incompetent and sickly?  The answer again is yes.

The second player is Israel.  Russia has, during the last week, bombed Israeli backed terrorists on Golan Heights, right under Israeli air defenses, an area where the Israeli Air Force has openly attacked Syrian forces in the past, though inside Syria.

Now the rules have changed and the terrorists, mostly al Nusra, but some FSA “moderate terrorists” as well, though there has yet to be anyone to prove the FSA is still active inside Syria, are being bombed out of existence.  Their only choice is to flee to Israel across the demilitarized zone policed by the United Nations or to sneak into Jordan where the government there has begun only recently rounding up terrorists.

Is this enough to enrage Israel into another of its endless crazed “USS Liberty” type acts of state terror?

Then again, did the plan crash on its own?

Today Russian investigators will be flooding into Cairo.  Those who waited with baited breath for the MH17 report to come from the Dutch, believing this would go somewhere and that NATO could engineer though state terror adequate moral highground to justify US military intervention in Ukraine, may have their day in reverse.

Now Russia gets to report and can take all the time they need.  Will Russia take advantage of this reversal of fortune?

From Russia Today:

Russian passenger aircraft with 220 onboard crashes over Egypt

 A Russian plane carrying over 220 people from Egypt to Russia disappeared from radars, and crashed in central Sinai, according to Russian and Egyptian authorities.

Kolavia Flight 7K9268, an Airbus A321, went off radar 23 minutes after taking off from Sharm El-Sheikh International Airport, Sergey Izvolskiy told the media citing preliminary data.

The plane was carrying 217 passengers and 7 crewmembers, he added. Seventeen of the passengers were children.

The Russian embassy in Egypt initially said all on board were Russian citizens. Later, the Belorussian embassy said one of the passengers was Belorussian. Egyptian authorities said three of the victims were Ukrainian, but Kiev didn’t immediately confirm that.

EI-ETJ is an Airbus A321 that belongs to airline Kolavia/Metrojet. Age 18 years https://t.co/EVPhMQGOoK#7K9268pic.twitter.com/XUTMgx2zNn

— Flightradar24 (@flightradar24) October 31, 2015

Egyptian Prime Minister Sherif Ismail confirmed that the Russian plane did go missing over Sinai and said a cabinet-level crisis committee has been convened to deal with the incident.

The crash site was discovered hours later in a desolate mountainous area of central Sinai, Egypt’s aviation ministry reported.

The plane was destroyed and all passengers and crewmembers were killed in the crash, Egyptian military and rescue officials told AP. Earlier, media reports suggested there might have been some survivors.

The Egyptian military told RT access to the crash site may be difficult for the press due to the volatile security situation in the Sinai. Large parts of the peninsula are dangerous due to the presence of militants, with only coastal areas in the north and south adequately guarded by security forces. The crash site is in the Hassana area 35 km south of Arish, the largest city in the Sinai.

04:13 UTC FR24 lost coverage of flight #7K9268 from Sharm el-Sheikh to St. Petersburghttps://t.co/RlcJTpDHwIpic.twitter.com/DfOPFJXYqq

— Flightradar24 (@flightradar24) October 31, 2015

The flight was traveling from the Egyptian resort to St. Petersburg. It belonged to the Kogalymavia airline, which also uses the brand name Metrojet, an operator popular among Russian tourists going to Egypt. The plane was supposed to contact air traffic in Turkish Cyprus’ Larnaca after leaving Egypt’s airspace, but failed to do so.

The tourist operator Brisco charted the ill-fated flight. The company is a business affiliate of Metrojet and they said the captain of the Airbus was an experienced pilot familiar with the aircraft.

“The captain was Velary Nemov, who has 12,000 flight hours under his belt, so he is definitely an experienced man. Of those, some 3,800 hours he spent piloting Airbus 320s. So we don’t have any reason to suspect human error from the crew,” a spokesman for Brisco said.

The plane climbed to its designated altitude of over 10,000 meters before rapidly losing speed, dropping and then vanishing from radar. Some reports in the Egyptian media cited eyewitnesses as saying the plane was on fire as it fell.

A source at Sharm El-Sheikh Airport told RIA Novosti the pilot of the missing plane requested a change of course, saying the jet would have to land in Cairo. The source said the crew of the crashed plane had complained to the airport’s technical service that the jet had engine problems.

It’s NOT confirmed that this flight has crashed. It descended 5000 feet before Flightradar24 coverage was lost. https://t.co/w5QKC7BXJX

— Flightradar24 (@flightradar24) October 31, 2015

The rapid drop the Airbus 321 reportedly experienced before crashing indicates pretty unusual circumstances and would suggest an emergency descent maneuver conducted by the crew, Captain Richard Woodward, former vice-president of the Australian and International Pilots’ Association (AIPA), told RT.

“If engines had failed, that would give you a dramatic loss of speed initially, but the crew would have lowered the nose and commit what is called a glide descent,” he explained. “My initial thought was that it might have been an emergency descent by the crew because they had a pressurization problem or dare I say perhaps a bomb on board.”

Russia has declared Sunday a day of national mourning for the crash victims.

Metrojet had a fatal incident in 2011, when one of its planes caught fire on a runway in Surgut Airport in Russia’s Urals. Three people died and 40 were injured as the plane burned out in just 10 minutes.

The last large-scale Russian airline incident happened in November 2013, when Tatarstan Airlines Flight 363 crashed at Kazan International Airport while attempting to land. Fifty people died in the incident