CAIRO: Egypt refused on Sunday to reopen an inquiry into a 2004 air crash off the Red Sea resort of Sharm El-Sheikh which killed 148 people, the official Mena agency reported. It is impossible to reopen the inquiry, as the victims families are requesting, unless we have new information about the reasons behind the crash, chief investigator Shaker Qelada said. He was commenting on a report published on Friday by the association of victim s families which said the official Egyptian report out in March 2005 was botched and demanded that the investigation be reopened. The plane, which was chartered by Flash Airlines, crashed on January 3, 2004, off the coast of Sharm El-Sheikh three minutes after takeoff: All 148 people on board, including 134 French holidaymakers, perished. Marc Chernet, head of the group defending the interests of the victims families, said there were omissions and anomalies in the Egyptian report. In air crashes, one never has 100 percent of the information of the circumstances, said Qelada. We had established 50 possible causes for the crash. After a detailed investigation, which lasted two years, we have dismissed 46 that did not match the information obtained from the two black boxes, he said. Qelada also rejected accusations by Chernet that less than 10 percent of the plane s debris had been found. The debris is at 1,023 m below the sea. Searches at this depth need a lot of time and enormous technical and financial resources. We have found the two black boxes, and they are the most important pieces for the investigators, he said.
