Flash Airlines Flight 604 was a charter flight from Sharm El Sheikh International Airport in Egypt to Charles de Gaulle International Airport in Paris, France, with a stop-over at Cairo International Airport, provided by Egyptian private charter company Flash Airlines. On 3 January 2004, the Boeing 737-300 that was operating the route crashed into the Red Sea shortly after takeoff from Sharm El Sheikh, killing all 135 passengers, most of whom were French tourists, and all thirteen crew members. The findings of the crash investigation were controversial, with accident investigators from the different countries involved unable to agree on the cause of the accident.

Flight 604 was the deadliest air disaster in Egypt until it was surpassed almost 12 years later by the bombing of Metrojet Flight 9268. It remains the deadliest accident involving a 737 Classic aircraft.

Background

Aircraft

The aircraft involved, manufactured in October 1992, was an 11-year-old Boeing 737-3Q8 powered by two CFM International CFM56-3C1 engines. At the time of the accident, it had accumulated around 25,600 flight hours and 18,000 cycles of takeoffs and landings.

Crew

The captain of Flight 604 was 53-year-old Khedr Abdullah who had accrued almost 7,500 hours of flight time, including 474 hours on the Boeing 737. The first officer was 25-year-old Amr al-Shaafei who had fewer than 800 hours of flying experience, with 242 of them on the Boeing 737. Also in the cockpit was 42-year-old Ashraf Abdelhamid, who was training as a first officer and had experience flying corporate jets.

Passengers

Most of the passengers aboard the flight were French tourists from the Paris metropolitan area. A provisional passenger list, dated 5 January 2004, stated that twelve entire French families had boarded the flight. Members of only seventeen families appeared at Charles de Gaulle Airport to meet passengers off the flight; this gave an indication to the airport staff that entire families had died on Flight 604.

{|class="wikitable" style="float:right;font-size:90%;text-align:center;"

|- style="background:#ccf;"

!Country of origin||Passengers||Crew||Total

|-

|align=left|Egypt<td>0</td>||13||13</tr>

|align=left|France<td>132</td>||0||132</tr>

|align=left|Morocco<td>2</td>||0||2</tr>

|align=left|Japan<td>1</td>||0||1</tr>

|-

!Total||135||13||148

|}

Accident

The aircraft departed from Sharm El Sheikh International Airport at 04:42&nbsp;EGY (02:42&nbsp;UTC) on 3&nbsp;January 2004. After taking off, it made a left turn to intercept the airport's VOR system, and the autopilot was then engaged.

Shortly afterwards, however, Captain Khedr made an unintelligible exclamation and the autopilot abruptly disconnected (this might have been an intentional action by the pilots or it may have happened automatically). At this point the aircraft entered a right bank of 40&nbsp;degrees. When the bank reached 50 degrees, First Officer al-Shaafei called out "overbank," indicating that the aircraft's bank was becoming dangerous. The bank angle increased rapidly until it reached 111&nbsp;degrees at which point the aircraft entered a stall. It crashed into the Red Sea at 04:45&nbsp;EGY (02:45&nbsp;UTC), just three minutes after takeoff, at a speed of at a right bank angle of 24&nbsp;degrees and at a nose-down angle of 24&nbsp;degrees. The tail broke off of the plane and rolled forward after the crash into the sea. All 148 people on board died in the crash. and the French Bureau of Enquiry and Analysis for Civil Aviation Safety (BEA).

The MCA released its final report into the accident on 25&nbsp;March 2006. Shaker Kelada, the lead Egyptian investigator, said that if Abdelhamid, who had more experience than the copilot, detected any problems with the flight, he would have raised objections.</blockquote>

Problems associated with the complexity of autopilot systems were documented in the June 2008 issue of Aero Safety World. Before the completion of the investigation, Avionics writer David Evans suggested that differences in artificial horizon instrumentation between the MiG-21 (with which the captain had experience) and the Boeing 737 may have contributed to the crash.

The Discovery Channel Canada / National Geographic TV series Mayday (also called Air Crash Investigation, Air Emergency or Air Disasters) depicted the accident in a 2007 episode, Season&nbsp;4 episode&nbsp;9, titled "Vertigo".

See also

  • Gulf Air Flight 072
  • Pan Am Flight 816
  • Adam Air Flight 574
  • Air India Flight 855
  • Viasa Flight 897
  • EgyptAir Flight 804
  • Lion Air Flight 610
  • Sriwijaya Air Flight 182
  • John F. Kennedy Jr. plane crash
  • The Day the Music Died

References

  • Ministry of Civil Aviation (Egypt): Flash Accident Final Report (Archive)

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  • Final report file (Archive) <!--Alt archive)-->
  • Interim report file (Archive) <!--(Alt archive)-->
  • Bureau of Enquiry and Analysis for Civil Aviation Safety
  • "Sea Search Operations." (Archive)
  • Information and press releases
  • Cockpit Voice Recorder transcript and accident summary