The pilot of EgyptAir Flight 804 spoke to air traffic control for “several minutes” before the doomed aircraft took its fatal plunge, according to a report that directly contradicts initial accounts of the crash.
Pilot Mohamed Said Shoukair had “a conversation” with air traffic controllers in Cairo, according to The Independent, citing French television station M6.
The plane was headed from Paris to Cairo Thursday when it went down somewhere in the Mediterranean Sea, killing all 66 aboard. Flight data automatically sent by sensors on aircraft indicated smoke inside the plane, officials said.
After the conversation, the pilot made an “emergency descent” in an effort to depressurize the cabin and clear the smoke, according to the French station.
But the report is the first that has Shoukair speaking to Egyptian authorities on the ground about the emergency.
After the flight vanished, an EgyptAir spokesman said there was a distress call from the airbus, but the statement was later refuted by the Egyptian military and withdrawn by the airline.
The French air accident investigation agency, the BEA, which sent three investigators to Cairo to participate in the official inquiry, did not confirm the M6 story.
The report comes as Egyptian President Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi on Sunday cautioned that finding the exact cause of the incident “will take time.”
“This is not one scenario that we can exclusively subscribe to … all scenarios are possible,” he said Sunday on Egyptian television.
Egypt has deployed a robot submarine to hunt for the crucial cockpit voice and data recorders from the plane. The submarine can operate at a depth of 9,842 feet.
The robotic vessel is used by the oil ministry to maintain offshore oil rigs, according to reports.
El-Sissi vowed to work with French authorities to unravel the mystery of what happened to the fated flight, which suddenly turned left, then pivoted toward the right, spun around and dropped 38,000 feet into the sea, authorities said.
Smoke was detected in different parts of the airplane, including the cockpit and the bathroom, officials said.
“It is very, very important to us to establish the circumstances that led to the crash of that aircraft,” el-Sissi said.
Meanwhile, families of the victims gathered at a crisis center in Cairo looking for answers and holding out hope for a miracle.
At least one mom is refusing to give up the idea her daughter might still be alive.
Flight attendant Samar Ezz Eldin, 27, shared an eery image of a drenched stewardess walking out of the water after a plane crash just four months after she started working for EgyptAir in 2014.
Her mom Amal is refusing to turn off her cell phone, a relative said.
“She doesn’t want to believe it… I told her to switch off her phone, but she said, what if Samar calls?” the relative told The Mirror.
None of the remains have been officially identified.