ased victims bodies are recovered and flown to russia, airline officials quickly seem to rule out human error and technical problems with the plane. the airlines are blaming anything except them. so when they talk about outside influences, it could be either a technical problem not caused by them by the manufacturer or in the case what i think they re implying here is terror. reporter: but russian investigators say it s too early to make any conclusions. former head of the ntsb peter golz agrees. we have the company speaking, i think, out of line saying that their aircraft was in perfect condition and there was no problems. then you have the egyptians who are saying, well, it broke up mid flight. but there s absolutely no sign of terrorism. i think all of those statements are inappropriate and ill-timed. reporter: isis is active in this part of the sinai peninsula. and the group has claimed responsibility. it s unlikely, but i wouldn t
take down an aircraft over 30,000 feet. this plane itself was over 30,000 in sinai. i don t know if a terrorist group that has the capability to do that. that is a serious piece of equipment with some people that had a lot of training. you can t just roll something out and take a plane like that down at that altitude if you re a terror group. so just to explain for our viewers a surface-to-air missile that you put over your shoulder. can t do it. rpg. not enough. mary, the plane dropped off the radar 23 minutes into the flight well after takeoff, does that timing give you any clue about whether or not it was a mechanical issue or something else? well, unfortunately the timing puts it squarely into either camp. it could squarely be in mechanical issue. i can name several crashs that have a signature like that. tw-800 for one it was a few minutes into the flight, gotten up to it wasn t as high as this but then a catastrophic explosion in the fuel tank brought it down. also
carry out, but other airlines announcing they re going to avoid flying over the sinai peninsula just in case. they are. and of course amongst those airlines you have france, lufthansa came out very quickly and said they would be diverting routes over the sinai. and now you have three airlines based in the em rats saying they are avoiding those routes as well. so airlines, yes, taking a necessary precautions even though at this stage no indication that it was any sort of missile strike. but no one wants to see this happen again. so it is to say the least better to be safe than sorry at this stage. all right. arwa damon live in egypt for us, thank you so much. let s go to matthew chance near the airport in st. petersburg, russia, where this crashed plane was headed. matthew, obviously in russia this is a national tragedy.
compare them to other mid-flight catastrophes or explosions. phil, how legit, how credible is the isis presence in the sinai? are they a thriving terrorist group? or is it just a couple bands of calling themselves isis? i would say after we saw the demise in the arab spring right now we have a semblance of democracy, i would call it more closely military dictatorship that led to the resurgence in the sinai, they pledged allegiance to isis which means in my world one significant thing, intent. they re not just focused if they pledge allegiance to isis ongoing after local targets. what they re saying is if we re affiliated with isis maybe we should think about the same targets that the central isis organization is focused on. that s why you look at this case and you get concern because top on that list is russia. mary, this same exact plane, the plane that crashed had an accident in 2001 when its tail hit the runway in a landing in
it is. actually, russia is no stranger to airline disasters. its had more of its fair share over the years, but something about this crash really seems to have struck a chord and touched people, and that s evidenced by this scene behind me. you can see even nearly three days after this catastrophe people are still coming, they re laying flowers, they re lighting candles, they re putting childrens toys here as a mark of how many children were on the plane. and perhaps it s because of that that it s been so resonant here. the fact this was a tourist flight, it was to a destination that many russians go for a bit of winter sun at the start of what is expected to be an extremely long and cold winter in this country. taking their families with them for the most part with 25 children on board that flight. one of them just 10 months old. there s a photo of her looking out of the window here at st. petersburg airport before she boarded that flight with her parents to go for that beach holida