EGYPTAIR Flight 804 generated automatic radio messages about smoke in the front portion of the cabin minutes before controllers lost contact with the aircraft over the Mediterranean Sea, French accident investigator BEA said.The electronic signals offer a puzzling twist to what may have happened to the flight, which went down on Thursday with 66 people aboard. The aircraft had smoke in the front part of the cabin, BEA said Saturday. Two error messages, the first at 2:26 a.m. local time, suggested a fire on board, while later alerts indicated some type of failure in the plane’s electrical equipment.While similar signals have preceded air accidents in the past, the warnings aren’t associated with a sudden disappearance from radar as occurred with the Airbus A320 over the Mediterranean. A Malaysian Airlines flight shot down over Ukrainian airspace in July 2014 broke apart so quickly that on-board systems didn’t have time to send distress messages."It’s too long for an explosion and too...
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