 ‘Only explainable cause is physical impact on the aircraft,’ says Metrojet official, ruling out technical fault or mistake by crew 
 
 Russian airliner Metrojet says Saturday’s plane crash in Egypt, which killed all 224 people on board, was not caused by technical problems or pilot error. [Sinai increasingly restive and unstable] 
 
 When a senior Metrojet official declared Monday that the company had ruled out pilot error or a technical malfunction as the reason for the crash, the government responded with a swift rebuke. The head of the Russian aviation agency said it was premature of Metrojet to comment on the possible cause since investigators do not have enough data to reach any conclusions. A source in the Egyptian committee analysing the plane’s black box recorders told Reuters the plane had not been struck from the outside and the pilot did not make a distress call before it disappeared from radar. Russian investigators say the plane broke up at high altitude over the Sinai Peninsula but have so far refrained from naming possible causes. “The airplane was 100% ready to fly, in working order, otherwise it wouldn’t have taken off,” she said. : Russia mourns after airliner crashes in Egypt: None of the 224 people on board a Russian aircraft survived after it went down en route from an Egyptian resort area to St. Petersburg. “Everything must be done to create an objective picture of what happened so that we know what happened and react accordingly,” Putin told Transport Minister Maxim Sokolov during a televised briefing on the investigation. At a news conference in Moscow, the deputy director of the airline, which was later renamed Metrojet, ruled out a technical fault and pilot error. Alexander Smirnov, the deputy general director of Metrojet, also told reporters Monday in Moscow that no technical fault could have caused the Airbus A320-200 to break up in the air. “The only explainable cause is physical impact on the aircraft.” Pressed for an explanation about what could have caused this impact, Smirnov said he was not at liberty to discuss details because the investigation was ongoing. “That airplane had an improper repair after a tail strike,” Wallace said, “and I think this Russian airplane that was in the accident had had a tail strike.” 
 
 The Aviation Safety Network reported that the Metrojet plane suffered a “tail strike” in 2001, a type of incident in which an airplane’s tail hits the runway.
– An ominous development in Saturday's crash of a Russian plane in Egypt: The airline says pilot error or technical problems could not have caused the crash of Kogalymavia Flight 9268, leaving unspecified "external activity" in the air as the only possible cause, reports the BBC, which notes that an ISIS affiliate is active in the area where the plane went down and that Moscow hasn't ruled out terrorism as a cause. "The only [explanation] for the plane to have been destroyed in mid-air can be specific impact, purely mechanical, physical influence on the aircraft," says airline deputy director Alexander Smirnov. "There is no such combination of failures of systems which could have led to the plane disintegrating in the air." He says that contrary to some reports, the flight did not send out a distress signal or contact air traffic controllers before it broke up midair, reports the AP. Russian officials, meanwhile, say they've gotten a look at the plane's black boxes and they're in good condition, per the AP. The bodies of around 140 of the 224 victims arrived back in St. Petersburg, the doomed flight's destination, early on Monday, reports the Guardian. A state of official mourning has been declared in the city for what officials say is Russia's deadliest aviation disaster, the Washington Post reports. The Post also reports that major carriers, including KLM and Air France, have decided to avoid flying over the Sinai Peninsula until the cause of the crash is known, though United, the only American carrier to fly over the Sinai, says it does "not see a need" to change its routes immediately.