An EgyptAir flight that crashed in 2016 while traveling from Paris to Cairo was caused by a pilot smoking a cigarette in the cockpit and starting a fire, according to a report.
EgyptAir flight MH804 disappeared from radar on May 19, 2016, with 66 passengers and crew on board, all of whom were killed. The wreckage of the Airbus A320 was found near Karpathos Island, about 220 miles southeast of Athens, approximately one month later.
The confidential 134-page report, viewed exclusively by Italian news organization Corriere Della Sera, concluded that pilot, Mohammed Saied Ali Shokair, lit a cigarette mid-flight—which was not forbidden at the time by the carrier—causing oxygen that was leaking from his co-pilot’s mask to start a fire triggered “by a spark or a flame.”
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