Investigation launched into cause of crash of Kogalymavia flight to St. Petersburg from Sharm El Sheikh

A Russian passenger jet crashed in Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula, killing all 224 people on board, after losing contact with aviation authorities on Saturday.

Egyptian officials said the Airbus A321 jetliner, which was operated by Russian carrier Kogalymavia, was flying to St. Petersburg from Sharm El Sheikh, a resort town popular with Russian tourists, when it disappeared from radar screens.

Egypt’s flagship state-run newspaper, Al Ahram, quoted an Egyptian aviation official as saying the plane’s pilot had requested to land at the nearest airport after an unspecified mechanical problem shortly after taking off at 5:50 a.m. local time. The newspaper later cited another Egyptian aviation official as saying the pilot hadn’t made any distress calls or requests to land.

Egypt’s chief prosecutor said the cause of the crash was being investigated. He didn’t say whether terrorism was suspected.

Sinai Province, the Egyptian branch of Islamic State, claimed responsibility for downing the plane, but officials have cast doubt over whether the group has the capabilities to carry out such an attack. Islamic State and its affiliated groups have frequently made exaggerated claims.

Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev to form a state commission to investigate the crash, the Kremlin said Saturday.

The Russian Embassy in Cairo said on its official Twitter account that all those on board were killed.

Mr. Putin “expressed his deepest sympathies to the families of those who died in the crash.”

The wreckage was located south of the city of Al Arish in the sparsely populated, mountainous north Sinai, according to the aviation authority. As many as 50 ambulances were dispatched, it said.

A spokesman for Egypt’s prime minister said 15 bodies had been recovered and sent to a morgue in Cairo, while investigators continued to search the crash site for evidence and victims. One of the black boxes, which record flight data and audio, was located and taken into the custody of the prosecutor general’s office, he said.

According to the spokesman, the passengers comprised 214 Russians and three Ukrainians, of which 138 were women, 62 men and 17 children. The count didn’t include the seven crew members.

According to the Kremlin, Vladimir Puchkov, Russia’s minister of civil defense, emergencies and disaster relief, was ordered to send aircraft to Egypt to aid in the recovery of the wreckage of the aircraft. Russia’s Emergencies Ministry said five aircraft were flying to Egypt with first responders and forensic investigators on board. The ministry also set up a hot line to aid families of the victims.

The U.S. Federal Aviation Administration in March warned U.S. airlines to avoid flying over the Sinai Peninsula below 26,000 feet. Airline routes traversing the region “are at risk from potential extremist attacks involving antiaircraft weapons,” the FAA said, including shorter-range, shoulder-fired antiaircraft missiles. “Some of these weapons have the capability to target aircraft at high altitudes,” or when approaching or departing airports, the U.S. aviation regulator said, noting that an Egyptian military helicopter flying at lower altitudes had been downed by extremists using a missile.

While south Sinai’s resort cities are largely safe for visitors, a number of northern cities including Al Arish have been engulfed by anIslamist insurgency and the rise of Sinai Province.

The militant group has shown increased military sophistication this year, carrying out increasingly audacious attacks on military and police installations with equipment that had been previously unheard of by the group.

Those assaults, including a rocket attack on an Egyptian Navy frigate in the Mediterranean Sea and a sustained attempt to occupy the town of Sheikh Zuwayed, have shown that the insurgency is well equipped, but military experts and the U.S. government have said the group’s weapons would be incapable of reaching a flight at cruising altitude.

The nature of Saturday’s claim was unusual for the group, which typically includes video or photo evidence of the attacks it takes credit for. But Saturday’s claim wasn’t accompanied by any such visual evidence, instead relying on publicly available facts about the crash.

In taking credit for the crash, the group said it was in response to Russia’s recent entry into the Syrian civil war.

Kogalymavia operates five Airbus A321 passenger aircraft, according to a July news release. Company representatives couldn’t immediately be reached.

Airbus said the A321 that crashed was built in 1997 and operated by Metrojet since 2012. The plane, one of the oldest versions of the single-aisle plane model that first entered service in 1994, had logged nearly 21,000 flights and around 56,000 flights hours, the Toulouse, France-based plane maker said in a statement, adding that it was ready to assist the accident probe.

Airbus narrowbodies have been involved in several recent high-profile crashes, including that of a Germanwings flight in March, apparently at the hands of a suicidal pilot killing all 150 people on board. Late last year, an AirAsia Indonesia plane carrying 162 peoplecrashed into the Java Sea. The crash report is pending.

Still, the Airbus single-aisle jet family, which, along with the Boeing Co. 737 represents the backbone of global commercial airline operations, has a good safety record, with a rate of 0.10 fatal crashes per one million flights—well below many other airplane models.