Egypt Air loses another aircraft

[abaris]

It seems unlikely that incapacitation by smoke alone can happen so quickly that the crew could not send out a message if the cockpit communication equipment had not been disabled by fire first.

It seems unlikely. But there has been some greek aircraft crash some years back where the whole crew and the passengers fell unconscious and the plane just continued on it's programmed path until it ran out of fuel.

Looks like a fire in the electronics, if the recent reports are right. Not the first time something like that happened, as you said. It would also shine a light on my original suspicion of the egyptian minister just covering his ass by calling it a terrorist attack without having any data. And I don't even go to Trump, since we all know that there's a guy, who doesn't need any data to call something what he believes to be politically convenient.