THE French Navy deployed a robot submarine as France and Egypt stepped up a major search to find the fuselage and flight data recorders of the aircraft that crashed into the Red Sea, killing 148 people.

Swiss aviation inspectors found faults with both airliners operated by the Egyptian airline whose Boeing crashed into the Red Sea on Saturday killing all 148 on board, it was revealed today.

SWISS officials said yesterday they had barred a crashed airliner more than a year ago because of technical deficiencies.

French and Egyptian officials laid wreaths today in an area of the Red Sea where a jet crashed, killing all 148 people aboard.

The Egyptian charter company whose plane crashed into the Red Sea killing 148 people had been banned from flying to Switzerland for more than a year because of technical problems, a civil aviation official said today.

Investigators in Egypt were today trying to discover the cause of a plane crash in which 141 people are feared to have died near the resort where the British Prime Minister Tony Blair is on holiday.