Trouble makers are never shy of making a threat or three, but it’s all very coincidental that the exact EgyptAir plane which crashed last week was the target of political vandals about two years ago.

Their message, written in Arabic, was simple: “We will bring this plane down”.

The scrawlings were the work of aviation workers at Cairo Airport, with more from the New York Times:

The officials, who were interviewed separately and who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe the airline’s security procedures because they were not authorized [sic] to speak publicly, said the graffiti had been linked to the domestic Egyptian political situation at the time rather than to a militant threat. Similar graffiti against Mr. Sisi, a former general, was scrawled across Cairo after the military ousted the elected president, Mohamed Morsi, in 2013…

EgyptAir has fired employees for their political leanings, stepped up crew searches and added extra unarmed in-flight security guards. Three such guards died in Thursday’s crash of Flight 804.

Whether those moves were sufficient remained an open question on Saturday as experts pored over data emitted by the plane in its final minutes for clues as to what had brought it down.

The presence of three EgyptAir security guards on the flight, as opposed to the usual two, has also been the subject of much debate:

Colleagues described the security guards who died in Thursday’s crash — Walid Ouda, Mohammed Farag and Mahmoud el Sayed — as professionals who had exhibited no signs of unusual behavior. They described Mr. Farag as a lighthearted man who was often teased by friends for not having married, while Mr. Ouda cut a more taciturn figure and was polite to a fault.

Until someone claims responsibility for the crash, or rescue teams can salvage the plane’s black box, rumours around what brought the plane down will continue to be just that.

[source:nytimes]

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