Stardate 20040103.1545

(On Screen): A charter jet leaving a resort at the tip of the Sinai peninsula has crashed, killing everyone on board. It's a great tragedy. Many people today are unsure whether they had relatives on board the jet, or have learned that they did and are mourning.

Of course, at this point when we learn of a jet crash in that part of the world, most of us wonder whether it was accidental or deliberate. After all, the last time an Egyptian jet crashed, it was because the co-pilot deliberately crashed it. (Actually, it wasn't quite the last time, but work with me here.)

So to head off any such speculation, officials of France and Egypt both announced that it was not the result of any terrorist act:

Egyptian Foreign Minister Ahmed Maher said the crash, which came as nations heightened security at airports and canceled flights because of terror threats, was "not related to any terrorist act."

The Civil Aviation Ministry said the crash was an accident apparently caused by a mechanical problem.

French officials also said the crash appeared accidental. Deputy Transportation Minister Dominique Bussereau told reporters at Charles de Gaulle airport outside Paris that the pilot detected problems on takeoff and tried vainly to turn back.

There may be records of radio communications indicating such a thing, and that does tend to rule out some kinds of terrorism (e.g. hijacking, or deliberate crash by a crew member). But how can they be sure that this is not the result of sabotage?

Answer: they can't be. We've seen this kind of reflexive denial before, and it's based more on trying to keep people calm than on any actual knowledge.

And that bothers me. I would have preferred an announcement to the effect that there had been no hijacking but that it was as yet not clear just what did happen. Until the black boxes have been recovered, and all the other kinds of things that the NTSB does for crashes in this country, we won't know what really happened.

And we may not know even then. The government of Egypt strongly resisted the NTSB conclusion that the plane's co-pilot deliberately crashed it, even thought that's what all evidence pointed to. The government of Egypt was not interested in finding the true cause of the crash; it wanted to find a cause which did not have negative political consequences.

Will they be honest about this crash? Even if it actually was caused by sabotage, will they claim otherwise? I couldn't say, but if they keep claiming it was entirely an accident, I'll always wonder.