France and Egypt launched a major push Monday to find the fuselage and flight data recorders of the aircraft that crashed into the Red Sea, killing 148 people.
The parts of bodies recovered from the sea so far bore no burns, suggesting there was no explosion on the Egyptian-chartered Boeing 737 that plunged into the sea minutes after takeoff on Saturday, French Deputy Foreign Minister Renaud Muselier said Monday.
The French sent a robot submarine to aid the search, but the deployment of the craft was delayed when Egyptian customs held it up at the airport, French officials said. Later Monday, the French Embassy said submarine had cleared customs.
The crash came amid worldwide fears that terrorists would use an aircraft to stage an atrocity. But Muselier told France-Info radio, "there is no reason to believe there was an attack." He added he thought the crash, which killed 133 French citizens, was an accident.
Egyptian officials say the crash of the jet, which had just taken off from Sharm el-Sheik for Paris, appears to have been caused by a mechanical problem.
Swiss aviation authorities had banned the carrier, Flash Airlines, after it failed an inspection at Zurich airport in October 2002. The same month, one of Flash's two Boeings was forced to make an emergency landing in Athens after an engine caught fire.
The chairman of Flash Airlines, Mohamed Nour, told The Associated Press that the company made the necessary improvements and passed a second Swiss inspection — but the Swiss denied this. Nour said the aircraft that suffered the fire was overhauled and subsequently maintained to international standards.
In an interview published Monday in the Swiss daily Le Matin, a former flight attendant for Swiss International Airlines was quoted as saying he noted several faults when he flew as a passenger on Flash Airlines from Zurich to Sharm el-Sheik about two weeks before the engine fire.
Robert Oesch said some of the cockpit instruments were not working, the pilots' oxygen masks were missing, there weren't enough oxygen tanks, many seats had no life jackets, many seats were ripped, the passenger safety cards were missing from some seats and the pilots were walking around the plane while it was on autopilot.
Oesch told the paper the plane was delayed for eight hours while it was checked by the civil aviation office, but was then allowed to depart.
"I agreed to get on board only because I was convinced that the inspectors had checked everything out carefully, but I admit that I was frightened throughout the flight," Oesch told Le Matin.
Germany's civil aviation authority put Flash Airlines' flying rights under review as a precautionary measure in light of the crash, a spokeswoman said, adding that the company has had flying rights in Germany only since last month.
French Transport Minister Gilles de Robien said Monday on France-Inter radio that Flash Airlines has a good reputation and that all planes "have the same level of security and, probably, if you count the checks, there are a few more for charter companies than for regular companies."
The depth of the Red Sea at the crash site has hampered efforts to retrieve the remains of the aircraft and find the flight data recorders.
A French official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the latest information showed the plane's wreckage no deeper than 1,320 feet, disputing earlier reports that the sea floor was twice as deep. He said officials were trying to determine whether the wreckage fell to a spot that was 3,300 feet deep, but added, "we don't think it has."
The French began using a frigate, a helicopter, 16 divers and an aircraft equipped with advanced radar and an ultra violet camera to search for the wreckage Monday, said French Embassy spokesman Ahmed Fadhel.
The robot submarine has a video camera and can dive to a maximum of 1,320 feet, Fadhel said.
The Egyptian Navy had six boats in the crash area Monday.
The wife of Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak, Suzanne Mubarak, dropped a wreath on to the water at the site Monday.
"It is a big tragedy and I am here to express condolences to all the families of the victims," she said. French relatives of the dead are expected to arrive midweek in this resort near the southern end of the Sinai peninsula.
French, Egyptian and Japanese officials laid wreaths at the site Sunday.
So far, about 60 body parts have been recovered and no entire corpse — an indication of the force of the impact of the plane, which suddenly descended from more than 5,000 feet.
Egypt has said the jet, an 11-year-old Boeing 737, had checked out fine before the flight.