New clues have appeared about the ill-fated EgyptAir Flight 804 on Friday, but the investigators are still to figure out what caused the plane to crash in the Mediterranean Sea.
Reports say that according to the flight data, there were smoke alerts near the airliner’s cockpit early Thursday in the minutes before it crashed.
Data reportedly came through the Aircraft Communications Addressing and Reporting System (ACARS), a data link for sending messages between planes and ground facilities. A screen grab of data shows time stamps matching the approximate time the aircraft disappeared.
Aviation experts said that the alerts don’t necessarily mean a fire happened on the plane or that the crew even knew about the alerts.
“(The data) doesn’t tell us anything, whether it’s an explosion because of a bomb or because of a mechanical fault, but immediately it narrows down the area that we’re looking at,” CNN aviation analyst Richard Quest said.
“We’re now no longer worried about wings or what else might have happened, or other flight control surfaces.”
The EgyptAir plane with 66 people on board crashed after disappearing from the radar while flying from Paris to Cairo. Egyptian officials say they suspect terrorism, but no group has claimed responsibility for the crash so far.