EgyptAir crash focuses scrutiny on aviation security

A 'strong' possibility that a terror attack brought down EgyptAir 804 early Thursday over the Mediterranean will prompt U.S. officials to take a hard look at international security measures in airports in Paris and Cairo, which both send flights directly to the United States, experts said.
The EgyptAir flight left from Paris' Charles de Gaulle airport, which sends dozens of flights daily to the U.S. and meets the toughest safety standards. In recent months, following terror attacks last November in Paris, French authorities revoked security passes for dozens of workers with suspected ties to radical Islamists.
Experts say security at Cairo's airport is much weaker.
Egyptian Civil Aviation Minister Sherif Fathi said the possibility that a terror attack downed the EgyptAir flight with 66 people onboard was “stronger” than a technical failure.
“Egyptian aviation security has been under scrutiny for some time and I think had this departed from Cairo, a lot of people would have immediately jumped to terrorism as a cause,” said Jeff Price, an aviation professor who writes about security issues at Metropolitan State University in Denver.
EgyptAir said Thursday that aviation authorities had not reached any conclusions about the cause of the crash. Search and rescue workers found debris from the plane off the coast of a Greek Island. Investigators will examine the wreckage to determine whether a catastrophic mechanical problem, pilot error or terrorism caused the crash.
FBI Director James Comey told reporters during a visit to the Chicago field office that U.S. officials don't have any evidence at this point that confirms the plane was brought down in a terrorist attack.
"We don't know exactly what this is yet," Comey said.
A U.S. official who was not authorized to speak publicly said there is no evidence that indicates an explosion during the final moments of the EgyptAir flight.
The EgyptAir flight was cruising at 38,000 feet when it turned abruptly and plunged into the sea. Its experienced pilots had checked in with Greek air traffic controllers 40 minutes earlier and had given no indication of anything amiss. The Airbus aircraft is considered among the safest aircraft.
“The list of causation is very, very long and very, very diverse,” said Anthony Roman, a trained pilot and president of the security consultancy Roman & Assoc. in New York. “The entire key here to determining this cause of the accident will be to locate the black boxes, the flight data recorder and the cockpit voice recorder. Without those, everything else is pure speculation.”
The International Civil Aviation Organization, a branch of the United Nations, sets minimum security standards for countries including France and Egypt, but specific screening varies. Airports that send nonstop flights to the U.S. must meet Transportation Security Administration standards for screening passengers and luggage.
Aviation security concerns are greater in the Middle East and Africa than in Europe. In October, Islamic State claimed credit for blowing up a Russian Metrojet flight 9268 after it departed the Egyptian airport at Sharm el-Sheikh. In February, an explosion blew a hole in the side of a Daallo Airlines flight just after taking off in Mogadishu, Somalia, but the plane landed safely.
Still, the U.S. keeps a closer watch on European airports because they send hundreds of direct daily flights to the U.S., while the airport in Cairo sends just a handful of direct flights each week to the U.S., and none by U.S. carriers.
The French National Assembly voted Thursday to extend by two months, until end of July, a state of emergency dating to the November attacks.
“I would suspect Paris would be on a very high alert,” said Danny Defenbaugh, a former FBI official who works as a security consultant at Defenbaugh & Assoc. in Dallas. “I would think that every airport learns from others’ mistakes, particularly where a terrorist incident is involved.”
Secretary of Homeland Security Jeh Johnson said officials have focused extra scrutiny since the summer of 2014 at overseas airports that send direct flights to the U.S. That focus intensified after the Metrojet crash.
“We went back and focused on that even more after the events of Sharm el-Sheikh, to evaluate the security at various airports in the region and evaluate the security at last-point-of-departure airports from that region into the United States,” Johnson said.
Security tightened worldwide after a terrorist attack in November killed 130 people at a Paris concert and restaurants and another attack in March killed 32 people at the Brussels airport and a subway station.
“There continues to be a concern about aviation security," Johnson told reporters on Friday. "We cannot call it quits and go home.”
Contributing: Aamer Madhani, Tom Vanden Brook and Patrick Costello.