It’s believed doomed EgyptAir flight MS804 was on fire before the crash.
Smoke was detected in a toilet near the cockpit of the downed jet, an aviation industry publication has claimed.
The Aviation Herald website said sensors detected smoke in the lavatory, suggesting a possible fire on board before the aircraft went down in the Mediterranean Sea early on Thursday.
The publication gathered information transmitted through the plane’s Aircraft Communications Addressing and Reporting System, which transmits data from the plane to the ground in the form of a series of messages.
Data showed that smoke was detected in the plane’s lavatory near the cockpit, according to the report.
Search teams found floating human remains, luggage and seats from the Airbus A320 on Friday, but face a potentially more complex task in locating bigger pieces of wreckage and the black boxes vital to determining why the plane went down.
Looking for clues to whether terrorists brought down EgyptAir Flight 804 and the 66 people aboard, investigators pored over the passenger list and questioned ground crew members at Charles de Gaulle Airport in Paris, where the plane took off for Cairo.
The Airbus had been cruising normally in clear skies on the night-time flight when it suddenly swerved left, then right, spun all the way around and plummeted 38,000 feet into the sea, never issuing a distress signal.
In Egypt, home to 30 of the victims, grieving families and friends are still waiting to see if the bodies of their loved ones will be recovered.
Many gathered in mosques for Salat al-Ghaib, or ‘prayers for the absent’, held for the dead who have not yet been found.
‘This is what is ripping our hearts apart, when we think about it. When someone you love so much dies, at least you have a body to bury. But we have no body until now,’ said Sherif al-Metanawi, a childhood friend of the pilot, Mohammed Shoukair.
