Tourist charter crash into the Red Sea

I've been watching this on French TV. That Swiss charter airline that
was ferrying most French vacationers to Sharm-el-Sheik.

Isn't it amazing that this charter airline crashed into the water just
off the Red Sea coastline but managed to settle in very deep water.
They've now recovered the black boxes from the wreckage at a
considerable depth .....well below where divers go. They're drying out
the magnetic tape in an effort to find out what happened.

What I recall most about the Red Sea off Sharm-el-Sheik is that there
are walls that drop very precipitously just a few feet off the
coastline. Also, one of the things I liked about the Red Sea was the
u/w topography -- very dramatic....those very steep drop-offs....a steep
descent into inky depths, not to mention all of the other wonderful
things about the Red Sea, the corals, the fabulous fish life, the big
animals and the very colorful reef fish life....it had it all!.

Daniel Kessler wrote:
> I've been watching this on French TV. That Swiss charter airline that
> was ferrying most French vacationers to Sharm-el-Sheik.

Eh, it was an Egyptian charter airline, which Swiss banned a while
back. Also, it's "Sharm el-Sheikh"

> Isn't it amazing that this charter airline crashed into the water just
> off the Red Sea coastline but managed to settle in very deep water.

Not really. It's amazing that it didn't crash into anything on land.
There is plenty of resorts and hotels where it could have killed a lot
more people.

As for deep water, well, I just arrived from Sharm on Friday, and I
am not surprised. In all of the locations we dived spare the
Thistlegorm, the coastline just drops vertically or almost-vertically
down to anything between 300 and 800m. Some reefs have narrow shelves
and some have satellite reefs with a bit of flat between them, but its
pretty steep there.

> What I recall most about the Red Sea off Sharm-el-Sheik is that there
> are walls that drop very precipitously just a few feet off the
> coastline. Also, one of the things I liked about the Red Sea was the
> u/w topography -- very dramatic....those very steep drop-offs....a steep
> descent into inky depths, not to mention all of the other wonderful
> things about the Red Sea, the corals, the fabulous fish life, the big
> animals and the very colorful reef fish life....it had it all!.

Sounds about right. We didn't do any of the "local" dives; dove the
Woodhouse reef in Straits of Tiran (in rather rough weather),
Thistlegorm, and a number of reefs in the Ras Mohammed protected area
(Ras Ghazlani, Shark Reef, Yolanda Reef, Shark Observatory, Jackfish
Alley, Ras Za'atar, and others). Well recommended. The reefs are just
amazing, and despite wintertime, there was good fishlife (including
tuna, barracuda, jackfish, groupers, a turtle and some morrays).

/Marcin

In article <Rr5Pb.7108$k4.156720@news1.nokia.com>,
Marcin.Dobrucki@FAKE.nokia.com (Marcin Dobrucki) wrote:

>
> > Isn't it amazing that this charter airline crashed into the water just
> > off the Red Sea coastline but managed to settle in very deep water.
>
> Not really. It's amazing that it didn't crash into anything on land.
> There is plenty of resorts and hotels where it could have killed a lot
> more people.

It came down in front of the MFO camp, i think.

DaveM