The 7K9268 Dramatic Display Team.

On Sunday (1/11/15) I said that I was not happy to speculate on what may have caused Kogalymavia flight 7K9268 to crash in Egypt's Sinai Peninsula on Saturday (31/10/15) until I had some firm evidence to support any theory. In the three days since then no new evidence has emerged so I am still not happy to give a definitive cause.

However I should point out that my initial gut instinct is that the crash was an accident caused by either an explosion in the engine/fuel tanks or something vital falling off the aircraft.

This theory is strengthened by the fact that on November 2001 the aircraft - Airbus A321-231 Serial #663 - experienced a tailstrike at Cairo International Airport whilst being operated by it's original owner Lebanon's Middle-East Airlines.

A tailstrike is pretty self-explanatory - on either take off or landing the tail of the aircraft strikes the runway. This obviously can significantly damage the tail of the aircraft.

Following the incident 663 was repaired by Middle East Air in accordance with a design procedure mandated by Airbus. It returned to service in 2002 before being sold to Turkey's Onur Air and then Saudi Arabian Airlines. In 2011 it was sold for a fourth time to a holding company in the Republic of Ireland and was leased to Kogalymavia who operated it under the brandname "Metrojet."

At every sale 663 was fully inspected by each new owner and their insurers and it was it was subjected to yearly airworthiness inspections. The most recent certificate of airworthiness was granted by the Irish Aviation Authority in May of 2015.

As a result if this type of mechanical failure is the cause of the crash there is absolutely no suggestion of any wrongdoing on the part of the Irish owner, the Russian operator or any Egyptian mechanics who may have serviced the aircraft prior to it's final flight.

However there are long standing concerns over whether the internationally approved repair regime following a tailstrike is sufficient.

For example on May 25th 2002 (25/5/02) a Boeing 747 operated by China Airlines broke apart on a flight between Taiwan and Hong Kong. The aircraft had suffered a tailstrike in Sweden in 1980 and 22 years later that repair failed causing the plane to crash killing all on board.

While the wings provide an aircraft with the lift needed for flight the tail section provides the stability and steering. Therefore if the tail section falls off mid-flight there is very little the pilot can do to control the situation leaving what happens next in the hands of God and gravity.

If the loss of a tail section forces an aircraft into either a steep dive or a violent spin the forces exerted on the aircraft can far exceed what it is designed to cope with. This can cause all sorts of secondary problems such as causing an engine to explode or ripping open the fuel tanks in the aircraft's belly again causing an explosion.

This is what happened to TWA flight 800 just after it took off from New York's JFK airport in 1996. Following an extensive investigation that carefully ruled out both an onboard bomb and a missile strike it was found that faulty wiring had caused the centre/belly fuel tank to explode.

If either a faulty tail repair or a faulty design of the belly fuel tank caused 7K9268 to crash then this is going to get very expensive for the aircraft manufacturer Airbus. Not only will they have to compensate the families of the victims along with their aircraft operator and the aircraft owner they are facing a potential re-call of all 1,156 A321's currently in operation.

It is due to this sort of potential conflict of interest why aircraft manufacturers are forbidden from taking part in the initial stages of an air crash investigation. The nation states of France and Germany who are major shareholders in Airbus are clearly not happy about this and have suspended flights over the Sinai in an effort to muscle in on the investigation.

Just these evening the Irish Aviation Authority who may also be liable for granting an airworthiness certificate to an un-airworthy aircraft have also joined in banning all Irish registered aircraft from flying over the Sinai.

The dramatic announcement of the evening though has come from the UK which has delayed all British flights due to take off from Sharm al-Sheikh airport in the southern Sinai until British experts can check the airport's security measures over concerns that 7K9268 MAY have been brought down by an onboard bomb.

This seems mainly driven by a long scheduled visit by Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi to the UK tomorrow (5/11/15).

Today at Prime Minister's Question Time the leader of the opposition Labour Party Jeremy Corbyn branded el-Sisi the leader of a coup a decried him being invited to the UK.

Assuming that Corbyn is not a massive supporter of Hosni Mubarak I think he is referring to the events of June and July of 2013.

With Egypt's authoritarian, Islamist President Mohamed Morsi having failed to deliver on a single one of the changes demanded by the revolution despite 18 months in office roughly 1/3rd of Egypt's population signed a petition calling for Morsi to resign. Roughly half that number then took to the streets in protest promising to stay day-after-day, night-after-night until Morsi stepped down.

It is at this point a democratic leader would have stepped down or at least called a snap election. Unfortunately Morsi was no democrat so eventually the army had to step in to nudge him out of office just the same as they'd nudged Mubarak out of office.

Since then Egypt has held a Presidential election which el-Sisi won, a Parliamentary election and a constitutional referendum.

The problem is that Turkey's authoritarian, Islamist President Recep Tayyip Erdogan had built his nation's expansionist foreign policy around Morsi being Egypt's President for life. After all it was Erdogan who described democracy as train that you ride until your destination of power then you get off and do away with it.

So Erdogan responded to Egypt's return to democracy by supporting Islamist groups to wage a terrorist war against the Egyptian state. For the most part this has been extremely low-level such as the occasional grenade or actually more often firework attack against Egyptian police buildings/patrols.

However it happens with such frequency that it has created a situation where the Egyptian state has been forced to increase security measures rather then increase civil liberties.

It has certainly made it impossible to ask the Egyptian security forces to take the massive pay cuts needed to roll back the Mubarak-era deep state.

Although he wasn't even their first choice Morsi represented the Muslim Brotherhood who are currently sponsored by Qatar. As such Qatar has lent it's propaganda arm - Al Jazeera - to support Erdogan's terror campaign.

Unfortunately many on Britain's left have been unable to identify Al Jazeera as a propaganda platform rather then a new agency so have been taken in by the scam.

Therefore the UK announcing that it thinks Egypt needs to tighten it's security measures in response to the terrorist threat is a good way to make clear that Corbyn is a weirdo who watches too much Al Jazeera rather then someone who in anyway influences UK policy.

That said there is a small gap in security at Sharm el-Sheikh airport that could have allowed a bomb onto 7K9268 or any future aircraft. I should stress though that it is a really tiny gap.

On paper security measures at Sharm el-Sheikh are exactly the same as at any EU or US airport. However in practice those measures aren't always followed. This is something that can be solved by sending out a strongly worded memo or conducting random spot checks.

I suspect that as I write the UK security experts currently inspecting Sharm el-Sheikh will be able to expand on that advice in a lot more detail.

21:20 on 4/11/15 (UK date).

Edited at around 12:05 on 5/11/15 (UK date) to add;

In the absence of firm evidence I could spend my time spinning an almost infinite number of convoluted conspiracy theories over the crash of 7K9268.

This is exactly what the US seem to have been prompted to do by the UK's announcement on Sharm el-Sheikh. After all it is hugely embarrassing for US intelligence to be forced to admit that they are nothing more then passengers in the Middle-East and it's wide range of conflicts.

Yesterday the US announced that it increasingly believes that the aircraft was brought down by a bomb smuggled onboard by the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) franchise in the Sinai which refers to itself a "Sinai Province" but is know to everybody else as Supporters of the Holy House/Ansar Bait al-Maqdis (ABM) who are little more then Bedouin gangsters and gun-runners.

This US assessment is based entirely on intercepted communications between ABM members made after the plane crash was all over the news. Therefore it seems to have zero credibility to it.

Also if you're talking about a civilian aircraft being brought down by a bomb that had been smuggled through airport security then the most likely suspects are Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) based in Yemen. They have long expressed a desire to bring down a passenger aircraft in this way and have been practising for a number of years.

AQAP were behind the failed "Underpants Bomb" on Northwestern Flight 253 in Detroit, Michigan, US on December 25th 2009 (25/12/09).

AQAP were also behind the 2010 Cargo Plane Bomb plots when two bombs disguised as printer cartridges were smuggled aboard two cargo planes bound for the US from Yemen on October 29th 2010 (29/10/10).

As both of these plots had critical flaws that rendered the bombs inoperable there is quite a lot of speculation that rather then being a legitimate terror group AQAP are in fact being run by Saudi Arabian intelligence.

The intention being to stage dramatic sounding but ultimately non-credible terror plots in order to trick US intelligence into providing security to Saudi Arabia's oppressive Monarchy.

AQAP were also responsible for the terror attacks on Paris, France that began with the attack on Charlie Hebdo magazine on January 7th 2015 (7/1/15).

Those attacks were really the final straw for the people of Yemen who rose up and overthrew the Saudi imposed government of Abd Rabbuh Mansur Hadi who is seen as AQAP's main sponsor in Yemen.

Saudi Arabia responded to this by launching a brutal war against Yemen in order to re-impose Hadi as President.

Due to debts owed to Saudi Arabia Egypt has been forced to participate in this war despite opposition from the Egyptian public who fear a repeat of Egypt's disastrous 1962-1970 intervention in Yemen.

Therefore it would make sense for 'AQAP' to bomb a passenger jet over Egypt. The hope being that it would strengthen support for the Saudi war against Yemen amongst an Egyptian public who would be tricked into thinking that it is war against AQAP rather then a war in support of AQAP.

Then of course there are the similarities with the Lockerbie bomb that brought down Pan Am Flight 103 on December 21st 1988 (21/12/88) which was blamed on Libya.

Although I disagree very much with the manner in which Libyan President Muammer Qaddafi was overthrown in 2011 initially the Libyan people did manage to take the first steps in forming a prosperous, secular democracy.

Unfortunately Qatar who are really leading operations in Libya thought the overthrow of Qaddafi was to bring about a chaotic, impoverished Islamist state.

So they continued to arm Islamist militia's under the banner of the "Libya Dawn." They forced the Libyan government out of Tripoli and declared themselves to be the government.

Curiously the United Nations (UN) leapt to Qatar's aid and imposed these ridiculous negotiations intended to force the elected Libyan government to accept the unelected Islamist militias as part of a government of national unity.

The main sticking point at the moment is whether Libya will be allowed to maintain it's secular identity or whether the militias will be allowed to impose a constitution making Islamic Sharia law the law of the land.

Back on October 16th (16/10/15) the US and UK authorities announced that they wished to question Abdullah al-Senussi - Libya's former head of intelligence - and Nasser Ali Ashour - a former senior intelligence officer - over the Lockerbie bombing. Both al-Senussi and Ashour are currently being held by the Islamist militias.

Therefore it seems likely that the US wants to question these men in order to grant more legitimacy to the Islamist militias.

After all the story it already been reported as; "Libyan authorities contacted over Lockerbie suspects" rather then the much more accurate; "US negotiates with Islamist terrorists over hostages they hold."

It seems that the UK went along with the plan to put pressure on the US over it's rabid claims over Malaysia Airlines Flight MH17 and it's support for Libya's Islamist insurgency.

Although it's a fight amongst family there is a degree of tension between Saudi Arabia and Qatar over the Muslim Brotherhood. Therefore the Libya discussion is exactly the sort of thing Saudi Arabia would want to be in the middle of.

Edited again at around 19:45 on 6/11/15 (UK date) to add;

When an aircrash occurs the investigation can be conducted by either the nation the aircraft took from, the nation that operates the aircraft or the nation that the aircraft was flying to.

So in the case of 7K9268 the investigation can either be carried out by Egypt or Russia. Due to Russia's more advanced capabilities Egypt has agreed that they will lead the investigation although Egypt will participate.

Back on July 17th 2014 (17/7/14) Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 crashed over Ukraine. Here the western nations - the US and the European Union (EU) - felt no need to wait for an investigation and immediately blamed Russia for the crash.

So we had a succession of World leaders lining up to condemn Russia and economic sanctions were immediately imposed against Russia. The then Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott even promised to have a fist fight with Russian President Vladimir Putin.

On October 13th 2015 (13/10/15) the final report into MH17 was released. It found that there was no evidence to support the claims that Russia was responsible for the crash. It did though find evidence that the Ukrainian government in Kiev was responsible through the negligent operation of it's airspace.

As I said above if the crash of 7K9268 was caused by a faulty repair to the aircraft that had been certified as safe by the aircraft manufacturer Airbus then this is going to get very expensive for the shareholders of Airbus that include the governments of many EU nations such as France and Germany.

Therefore those EU nations are now very worried that Russia will pay them pack for their misbehaviour of MH17 by not pulling any punches in their recommendations in the level of compensation Airbus will have to pay over 7K9268 and the improvements to all the other A321's in operation they will have to make.

However if an aircraft has been brought down by a deliberate criminal or terrorist act the investigation will be handled by the International Civil Aviation Organisation (ICAO) rather then an individual nation state.

So although they didn't follow that procedure during the MH17 investigation western nations are now desperately playing up the terrorism angle in a hope of triggering an ICAO investigation which they hope to influence in order to reduce the costs to Airbus.

Today Russia indicated that the investigation so far is pointing strongly towards negligence on the part of Airbus. They did this by revoking licenses for Boeing 737's to operate within Russia on the grounds that the improper repair of this aircraft type had caused two accidents in 2008 and 2013 that killed  138 people.

They followed this up by announcing that they will be suspending all Russia flights to Egypt - not just Sharm el-Sheikh but all of Egypt. As Russians make up the majority of visitors to Egypt this seems intended to force the western nations to reflect on the effect on the Egyptian economy that their attempts to protect Airbus' losses are having.

The US responded to this by announcing that it is sending teams to review security at Sharm el-Sheikh airport. This is because they want to know what the UK, Egypt and Russia are all saying to each other.

Also today the UK has begun to evacuate passengers from Sharm el-Sheikh who were stranded by the decision to suspend UK flights. In true British fashion the UK government cocked this right up.

In their arrogance they assumed that UK flights being suspended meant that all flights had been suspended. This was not the case with Sharm el-Sheikh continuing to operate as normal with flights from places like Russia and Ukraine continuing to arrive and depart as scheduled.

So when the UK decided to send 29 flights to Sharm el-Sheikh there were still only 8 landing/take-off slots to accommodate them. As a result 21 of the flights had to be turned back.

The situation should slowly sort itself out over the coming days. My advice to travellers is to speak to your specific tour operator.

Of course the fact that Russia has now cancelled all inbound flights should help free up plenty of those runway slots helping smooth the situation.