Flash Airlines Flight 604
2004 Egyptian aircraft accident
Flash Airlines Flight 604 was a charter flight from Sharm El Sheikh International Airport in Egypt to Charles de Gaulle International Airport in Paris, France, with a stop-over at Cairo International Airport, provided by Egyptian private charter company Flash Airlines. On 3 January 2004, the Boeing 737-300 that was operating the route crashed into the Red Sea shortly after takeoff from Sharm El Sheikh, killing all 135 passengers, most of whom were French tourists, and all thirteen crew members. The findings of the crash investigation were controversial, with accident investigators from the different countries involved unable to agree on the cause of the accident.
Flight 604 was the deadliest air disaster in Egypt until it was surpassed almost 12 years later by the bombing of Metrojet Flight 9268. It remains the deadliest accident involving a 737 Classic aircraft.
Background
Aircraft
The aircraft involved, manufactured in October 1992, was an 11-year-old Boeing 737-3Q8 powered by two CFM International CFM56-3C1 engines. At the time of the accident, it had accumulated around 25,600 flight hours and 18,000 cycles of takeoffs and landings.
Crew
The captain of Flight 604 was 53-year-old Khedr Abdullah who had accrued almost 7,500 hours of flight time, including 474 hours on the Boeing 737. The first officer was 25-year-old Amr al-Shaafei who had fewer than 800 hours of flying experience, with 242 of them on the Boeing 737. Also in the cockpit was 42-year-old Ashraf Abdelhamid, who was training as a first officer and had experience flying corporate jets.
Begin with the source’s own compact description: “Flash Airlines Flight 604” is 2004 Egyptian aircraft accident. The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Flash, Airlines and Flight, not as a finished interpretation.
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The phrase “2004 Egyptian aircraft accident” supplies a clear boundary for inquiry. It also exposes the unanswered questions: who defined that boundary, when it became stable and which sources sit outside it.
Named sources, stable identifiers and responsible institutions provide the strongest route from overview to verifiable evidence. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 7, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q1427211. Authority coordinates are 27.833, 34.383. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 2004 and 1992.
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This entry incorporates text from “Flash Airlines Flight 604” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.