20-some years old and had, i think, 50-some thousand hours, doesn t make it dangerous. i m sure you ve seen in the press, the co-pilot s reportedly said that he was not happy with the condition of the aircraft. that s just a press account. nothing official. but i think at this point we don t we probably shouldn t assume that there was a known mechanical problem that this plane was operating unsafely or knowingly unsafely. we ll just have to wait until we get the information from the recorders and take it from there. obviously, the russians are visiting the offices of metro jet and they re looking at all the background information, including even the fuel that was put aboard the aircraft before it left. they always do that. they take fuel samples from the tanks where the fuel came from, that was used aboard the airplane. they re going to check out everything. egyptians are going to be thorough approximate this and the russians and the french i m
We ll just have to wait until we get the information from the recorders and take it from there. obviously, the russians are visiting the offices of metro jet and they re looking at all the background information, including even the fuel that was put aboard the aircraft before it left. they always do that. they take fuel samples from the tanks where the fuel came from, that was used aboard the airplane. they re going to check out everything. egyptians are going to be thorough about this and the russians and the french i m sure will help. that s right. there are a number of investigations under way. of course, this plane went down when it was at cruising altitude, about 30,000 feet. how unusual is it for a plane to fall out of the sky when it s at that kind of location within a flight path? only about 13% of accidents occur in cruise. it s obviously the safest part of the flight. so it is fairly unusual.
Indication from the flight crew that something catastrophic was starting to happen. and they reported the that. and that will be the main clue and i think that the egyptian authorities are relying on that communication to dismiss terrorism. and then, peter, reuters is now reporting that russian officials have launched a criminal case against the airline. they re checking from fuel samples from the plane s last refueling stop, for instance. is this standard procedure, or what does this say to you? it is standard procedure. and many of the european or eastern nations. they have a concurrent criminal investigation. the french have that. many of the eu countries that have it, that starts with the accident investigation. in the united states, we don t have that process. but certainly, fuel contamination will be one of the things that people will check at right away, to see whether they got a bad fuel reload.
Occurrence. egypt. they have the legal responsibility to start bringing the investigation about. then you ve got the state register. that appears to be island. air bus, which will be france. and russia. we know russia has set up an investigation. reuters reporting they re checking into some of the fuel samples and they ve opened a criminal investigation against the airline as well. just to clarify about the black box. they know the location. they have not actually been able to harvest it as of yet. that s the latest we re hearing from the newsdesk. john cox, to build off what mikey kay was saying. the fuel sample is number one. why? number two, speaking with employees, both in russia, and three, the travel agency that appears to have chartered this jet. as investigator, what are you going to be gathering from these pieces?
Tonight from russian television stations which show the moment of impact. you see the plane coming down like a fireball. then you see that horrible explosion. nose first crash into the tarmac. i asked our phil black in moscow if investigators had any leads on what caused the crash. reporter: russian authorities say they are maintaining a wide investigation to try and determine the cause of this crash. they have confiscated evidence and fuel samples and they are considering the possibilities of boet human error and mechanical failure. clearly the pilot was in trouble in the minutes leading up to this crash. he was having difficulty getting the aircraft safely on the ground. he had aborted one landing and was coming around for a second when the accident happened. russia has a terrible record for air safety, but accidents like this here usually involve old soviet aircraft, in this case it was a 23-year-old boeing 737. boeing is sending a team of