Audio from EgyptAir Flight 804 indicates that it was business as usual before the plane crashed killing all 66 passengers on-board.
The Mirror reports that in the recording the plane’s pilots can be heard checking in with Swiss air traffic controllers in Zurich, who then joked with their Greek counterparts.
At around midnight on Wednesday night, the pilots contacted Zurich before they were handed over to Italian air traffic controllers. The Zurich controller said to the pilot: ‘EgyptAir 804, contact Padova 1-2-0, decimal 7-2-5, good night’.
The pilot replied: ‘This is 0-7-2-5 Padova control. [Unintelligible] 8-0-4. Thank you so much. Good day, er, good night’.
The plane entered the Athens sector of Greek airspace at 2.24am local time, and another 24 minutes later controllers spoke to the pilot who they say was in good spirits, thanking them in Greek.
Egyptian ArmyAt 3.27am Greek time, Athens air traffic control attempted to contact the plane to hand over monitoring of the flight from Greek to Egyptian authorities.
Despite repeated calls, the plane did not respond, even when they contacted them on the emergency frequency.
Meanwhile, on-board sensor data shows that smoke had reached the planes avionics, the computers which control the plane.
The plane then entered Egyptian airspace and fell off the radar.
WikimediaThe recording comes from www.liveatc.net, a site that provides live air traffic control broadcasts from around the world.
Only yesterday, flight data was leaked which appeared to show there was trouble in the cockpit and potentially a fire onboard, after smoke detectors went off in the plane’s toilet.
Officials say it’s still too early to know for sure what happened to the aircraft, with France’s foreign minister adding that ‘all the hypotheses are being examined,’ but evidence suggests a quick catastrophe led to its crash.
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