Egypt has deployed a submersible to help find the wreckage of EgyptAir Flight 804 in the deep Mediterranean waters where it crashed, president Abdel Fattah el-Sisi said Sunday, as he warned that it might take a “long time” before the cause of the crash was determined. An international flotilla of search ships, aided by surveillance planes, was scouring a section of sea 180 miles north of the port city of Alexandria, and retrieved some wreckage, belongings and human remains over the weekend. But the search crews have yet to find the main body of the plane and its cockpit data and voice recorders. Although Egyptian officials initially pointed to terrorism as the most likely cause of the crash, Sisi said Sunday that all possibilities were being considered. <br/>
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In an eerie coincidence, the EgyptAir jetliner that plunged into the Mediterranean Thursday was once the target of political vandals who wrote in Arabic on its underside, “We will bring this plane down.” Three EgyptAir security officials said the threatening graffiti, which appeared about 2 years ago, had been the work of aviation workers at Cairo Airport. Since then, the airline has put into effect a variety of new security measures in response to Egypt’s political turmoil, jihadi violence and other aviation disasters like the crash of a Russian plane that killed 224 people in October. EgyptAir has fired employees for their political leanings, stepped up crew searches and added extra unarmed in-flight security guards. Three such guards died in Thursday’s crash of Flight 804. <br/>
The lack of early progress in the hunt for the wreckage of EgyptAir Flight 804 is likely to revive debate over measures airlines could take to ensure investigators obtain essential data more quickly in future accidents. More than 36 hours after the plane went down in the Mediterranean Sea, the Egyptian military said searchers had spotted the first pieces of debris. But an international sea-and-air search team of ships, planes and helicopters was still struggling to establish the exact location of the debris field. Even before the latest underwater effort begins in earnest, air-safety experts and accident investigators once again are pushing the industry to embrace available technologies intended to swiftly get data from airliners after an accident or emergency. <br/>
Air India has rehired more than 75% of the cabin crew members who retired in the past 6 months or so apparently because a large number of employees at the airline are often unavailable for duty. The carrier has rehired about 81 cabin crew members among 238 employees in various departments, including 50 in engineering and 90 in ground handling subsidiaries, officials said. These employees have been rehired on contract for one year and will be paid the last drawn salary in most cases, they said. "We have enough cabin crew but the problem is of availability because a lot of them are on leave or would not fly," a senior official said. Cabin crew shortage is a recurring problem for Air India, which was earlier directed by the govt to hire more than 800 cabin crew members to overcome flight cancellations and delays. <br/>
Chinese aviation and tourism giant HNA will buy a stake of up to 20% of TAP, a private shareholder of the European company said Saturday. HNA will buy an initial 7% stake of Atlantic Gateway, the private consortium that owns half of TAP, said businessman Humerto Pedrosa, adding that its direct and indirect stake could reach 20%. The indirect stake could come through HNA’s ownership since a November buyout of 23.7% of Azul’s shares. Portuguese weekly Expresso said HNA’s acquisition of TAP shares should come in the next 3 months. The Chinese group is set to acquire part of the E90m (US$100m) worth of convertible bonds in shares issued by Azul to bail TAP out. TAP’s private investors and Portugal’s new Socialist govt Friday signed an agreement to partially review the privatisation of the airline. <br/>
The govt's renationalisation of Air NZ in 2002 to save the airline from bankruptcy has paid off in the long run by delivering an annual return estimated at 8.4%, the Treasury says. The Crown took an 82% stake in Air NZ at the start of 2002 to save a company reeling from its disastrous investment in Ansett Australia, which it was forced to put into administration in Sept 2001, a day after reporting a net loss of NZ$1.4b. The Crown injected a further $149m into the recapitalised airline in 2004, taking its total investment to about $1.04b. A report says the Crown has received dividend payments of about $869m since January 2002, excluding any dividends paid to Crown financial institutions such as the New Zealand Superannuation Fund and the ACC that may have held the airline's stock. <br/>