Swiss official: Egyptian airline banned; Cairo denies claim
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Egyptian television shows a shoe floating in the plane's debris field Saturday.
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Recovery crafts continue to search the Red Sea site of an air charter crash, and mourners drop flowers into the water. (January 4)
Egyptian charter plane crashes in the Red Sea.
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SHARM EL-SHEIKH, Egypt (CNN) -- Flash Airlines, which operated a chartered Boeing 737 that crashed in the Red Sea off Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt, was banned by Switzerland in 2002 over technical worries, the country's office of aviation said Sunday.
No survivors have been found in Saturday's crash, which killed at least 148 people -- most of them French vacationers returning home from the Egyptian resort town. Officials have described the crash as an accident and said terrorism has been ruled out as a possible cause.
Speaking on Swiss television, Celestine Perrisinotto, spokeswoman for the Federal Office for Civil Aviation, said "a series of shortcomings showed up" in a Flash Airlines plane during a security check in October 2002.
Egyptian officials were given a list of the shortcomings, and the airline did not seek to re-enter Switzerland, she said. The Swiss news agency Swissinfo quoted Perrisonotto as saying that Flash never responded to the Swiss concerns, and she could not offer details of the problems Swiss authorities found.
Egyptian Civil Aviation minister Ahmed Shafiq said the Swiss statement was inaccurate and baseless.
Speaking to CNN in Sharm el-Sheikh, Shafiq said he wanted to see documents proving what the Swiss official said was true. And he said Egypt has documents stating that Flash Airline's planes were safe.
Shafiq said a technical problem caused the crash, although searchers have not yet found any flight data recorders from the aircraft that might help explain what went wrong.
"Just two minutes or let us say three minutes after takeoff, we imagine that the pilot has discovered something which is abnormal in the control and the serviceability of the aircraft in general, he changed his plan maybe again trying to land again in the same airport," he said.
In Washington, the U.S. National Transportation Safety Board said that, at the request of the Egyptian government, it was sending a representative to assist in the investigation.
The Egyptian charter airline company is based in Cairo and operated two Boeing 737-300s, both made in 1993. It is part of Flash Group, which offers vacation packages across Egypt.
"Safety and reliability are the motto of the company," its Web site said. "Each flight will be an enjoyable journey."
France said it will cooperate with Egyptian investigators and the French Ministry of Aviation will help transport bodies back to France and retrieve plane wreckage, said Egyptian Foreign Minister Ahmed Maher.
