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Mother of EgyptAir stewardess hoping for news her daughter lives

The mother of a stewardess working on the crashed EgyptAir flight refuses to give up hope her daughter might still be alive.

As recovery teams retrieve wreckage and belongs from the Mediterranean Sea, families of the missing 66 passengers and crew are starting to come to terms with their loved are likely dead.

For the mother of Samar Ezz Eldin, it is a reality too hard to accept.

Source: Facebook

"She doesn't want to go home or move from the door," Samar's aunt Mona told the Mirror.

The 27-year-old stewardess of two years was working aboard the plane when it disappeared Thursday.

DNA tests are being carried out on the personal effects of passengers and crew fished from the water, but no-one has been formally identified.

Source: Facebook

For Samar's mother, there is a false hope.

"She doesn't want to believe it... I told her to switch off her phone, but she said, 'what if Samar calls?'" Mona added.


Source: Facebook

EgyptAir has been housing the families of the passengers and crew in Cairo as the search and recovery continues, but many have began to return home to be with loved ones and grieve.

There were 56 passengers and 10 crew aboard the flight.

Their nationalities included 30 Egyptian, 15 from France, two Canadians, and one passenger each from Algeria, Belgium, Chad, Iraq, Kuwait, Portugal, Saudi Arabia, Sudan, and the UK.

Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi said robot subs have been deployed to the Mediterranean in the hunt for the plane's wreckage and possibly its flight recorders, which are still missing.

Ships and planes scouring the sea north of Alexandria have found body parts, personal belongings and debris from the Airbus 320

Sisi said that underwater equipment from Egypt's offshore oil industry was being brought in to help the search.

Personal effects thought to be from MS804. Source: Egyptian military

"They have a submarine that can reach 3000 metres under water," he said in a televised speech. "It moved today in the direction of the plane crash site because we are working hard to salvage the black boxes."

An oil ministry source said Sisi was referring to a robot submarine used mostly to maintain offshore oilrigs. It was not clear whether the vessel would be able to help locate the black boxes, or would be used in later stages of the operation.

Some of the debris pulled from the water. Source: Egyptian military

Air crash investigation experts say the search teams have around 30 days to listen for pings sent out once every second from beacons attached to the two black boxes.

At this stage of the search they would typically use acoustic hydrophones, bringing in more advanced robots later to scan the seabed and retrieve any objects once they have been found.

French investigators say that the plane sent a series of warnings indicating that smoke had been detected on board shortly before it disappeared.

The signals did not indicate what caused the smoke or fire, and aviation experts have not ruled out either deliberate sabotage or a technical fault, but they offered early clues as to what unfolded in the moments before the crash.

Source: FlightData

"Until now all scenarios are possible," Sisi said in his first public remarks on the crash. "So please, it is very important that we do not talk and say there is a specific scenario."

The crash was the third blow since October to hit Egypt's travel industry, still reeling from political unrest following the 2011 uprising that ousted Hosni Mubarak.

A suspected Islamic State bombing brought down a Russian airliner after it took off from Sharm al-Sheikh airport in late October, killing all 224 people on board, and an EgyptAir plane was hijacked in March by a man wearing a fake suicide belt.

The October crash devastated Egyptian tourism, a main source of foreign exchange for a country of 80 million people.

News break – May 23