Search teams hunted with nets on Sunday for the remains of 148 people, mostly French tourists, who died in an Egyptian plane crash France said was most likely due to a loss of power.
Egypt defended the safety of its aircraft after Swiss aviation authorities said they had banned from Swiss airspace the operators of the Boeing 737 which plunged into the Red Sea minutes after take-off from the tourist resort Sharm el-Sheikh on Saturday. The victims included 133 French tourists.
An official of Egypt's Civil Aviation Ministry said all planes belonging to private Egyptian companies were subject to regular inspections and no plane was allowed to take off until its safety had been checked.
As boats and planes scanned the Red Sea for bodies and wreckage, France's Transport Minister Gilles de Robien said in Paris, while no one could be absolutely certain, all indications pointed to an accident.
"There was no explosion before the crash, no one has claimed responsibility for (an) attack," he said. "The arguments most commonly set out show that it was simply a loss of power," he told French radio Europe 1.
French Deputy Foreign Minister Renaud Muselier toured the crash site as France sought to answer what had happened to the plane.
In Zurich, a Swiss aviation official said the private Egyptian charter company Flash Airlines, operators of the doomed Paris-bound plane, had been banned from Swiss airspace since October 2002 due to safety concerns.
"During an inspection we discovered that the airline was a danger to aviation security," said Celestine Perissinotto, a spokeswoman for the Swiss Federal Office for Civil Aviation.
"If a company is forbidden (to fly over national airspace)...that means the problems are serious," she said.
Egypt's Civil Aviation Minister Ahmed Mohamed Shafiq Zaki responded by saying the Swiss had not punished Flash Airlines for safety violations.
The official Egyptian news agency MENA said he denied reports that Switzerland had refused to let Flash Airlines planes land on Swiss territory.
"He said that irresponsible statements should not be made in such circumstances," the agency added.
Officials of Flash Airlines and other Egyptian government officials would not address the Swiss report directly but they insisted the country maintained high standards.
Fouad Hassoun, one of the partners in the Flash Group, which owns Flash Airlines, told the Qatar-based television station Al Jazeera that the Boeing 737 had been properly maintained.
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