Voice and data recorders show that the pilot and a co-pilot of EgyptAir Flight 990 struggled for control of the aircraft as it plunged into the north Atlantic, killing 217, according to a congressional source who was briefed by the FBI on Tuesday.
Investigators are uncertain about the identity of the person occupying the co-pilot’s seat. Some are convinced it was 37-year-old Adel Anwar, the co-pilot listed on the flight manifest, but others, according to NTSB sources, have raised the possibility that it was the backup co-pilot, 59-year-old Gameel el-Batouti. He was scheduled to fly the last leg of the flight to Cairo.
“We are still trying to determine who was sitting where and who was doing what,” said an official of the National Transportation Safety Board. Egypt Air is bringing in pilots who knew both men to listen to the tape and attempt a more precise identification.
A plan for the FBI to take the lead in the investigation was delayed Tuesday, after Egyptian officials raised questions about making it a criminal probe.
NTSB Chairman James Hall said a team of additional experts from Egypt would join the investigation Wednesday. He added that “it is only prudent” for the safety board to fully evaluate the cockpit tape before deciding whether to shift responsibility for the investigation to the FBI.
Other U.S. officials were surprised that the Egyptians did not quickly and enthusiastically acquiesce to the FBI’s taking over the investigation. Until late Tuesday, some officials were confidently predicting that the FBI would take over.
Hall also cautioned that officials were uncertain about the meaning of a religious utterance, recited in Arabic by someone on EgyptAir’s flight deck, that was recorded on the cockpit voice tape just before the jetliner began its fatal 3-mile plunge.
One American official said the words meant, “I am leaving this in your hands,” apparently referring to God.
Some Egyptians, however, identified the utterance as the shihada, a short declaration of Islamic faith. The prayer, whose words, “La illaha il-lallah, Muhammadan rasul Allah,” mean, “There is no deity but Allah, and Muhammad is the messenger of God,” is often recited when a person is in trouble or near death.
To some in the U.S. government, the words suggested a criminal act, the deliberate downing of the aircraft. In Cairo and elsewhere, followers of Islam said the phrase was consistent with someone facing overwhelming peril, not necessarily of his own making.
“As long as there are differences in the interpretation–and there are significant differences in the cultural interpretations of some expressions on the recorder–I think it is unfair . . . for us to characterize it,” Hall said.
What has emerged from the investigation so far is a harrowing picture of clashing wills, as the jetliner plummets and two men frantically push the controls in opposite directions.
According to NTSB officials, the first 28 minutes of the flight, which left Kennedy International Airport at 1:19 a.m. on Oct. 31, began routinely.
Flight 990’s captain, Ahmed el-Habashy, who was only a few months away from retirement, and the co-pilot obeyed the universal code that restricts conversation to flight-related business until the aircraft rose above 10,000 feet, according to an individual familiar with parts of the transcript from the voice recorder.
The two men then worked together in a “professional but friendly manner” as they ran through a checklist of duties.
A half-moon faintly lit the night sky, meteorological records indicate, as at 1:47 a.m. EST an air-traffic controller in Boston cleared Flight 990 to level off at 33,000 feet. The controller wished the two pilots a good flight over the Atlantic. It was the last communication with the EgyptAir crew.
While the interior lights of the 767 had been dimmed to allow passengers to sleep during the 11-hour trip to Cairo, el-Habashy flipped a switch releasing the lock on the cockpit door and walked into the main cabin, presumably to visit the lavatory, according to Congress members who met with FBI Director Louis Freeh.
Whoever was left in the cockpit then recited the religious words.
At 1:49:45 a.m., according to the plane’s flight data recorder, someone, presumably Anwar or Batouti, allegedly disengaged the autopilot. Eight seconds later, the aircraft began a steep descent and el-Habashy rushed into the cockpit shouting: “What are you doing! What are you doing!”
Freeh told the congressmen that a struggle ensued for control of the plane, which plunged to 19,700 feet in 36 seconds, putting the passengers through the terror of zero gravity. Seconds after 1:50 a.m., the plane exceeded its maximum design speed of .86 Mach and the master warning siren activated, signaling the aircraft structure could not tolerate the stress.
During the struggle, el-Habashy grabbed the left control column and may have attempted to restart the aircraft’s twin engines, which had been switched manually from “run” to “cutoff.”
Less than 20 seconds elapsed after the speed-warning alarm, and the flight data recorder would later show that the two wing-like panels on Flight 990’s tail section, called elevators, split apart–one going up and one going down–making it impossible to control the pitch of the nose.
The 767 was designed that way, to enable the crew to work together on controlling at least one elevator if the other becomes stuck. But investigators said readings from the flight data recorder indicate el-Habashy and the other man were pushing their respective control columns in opposite directions.
More Top Picks Best Cordless Robotic Pool Cleaners
An NTSB official said EgyptAir employees reviewing the tape were unanimous in saying they heard Capt. el-Habashy shouting several times, “Pull back with me!” as the elevators on the horizontal stabilizer deployed in opposite directions.
The plane began pulling out of the dive, shifting from weightlessness to 2.5 Gs. Seconds later, as the aircraft broke apart, the plane’s transponder and flight and voice recorders stopped working.
The last radar signal was received from the plane at 1:51 a.m., after it climbed from 16,000 feet to 24,000 feet, stalled and fell into the ocean.
The NTSB press briefing, originally scheduled for 1 p.m. to announce the handoff, was delayed 5 1/2 hours as officials talked with Egyptian representatives and labored to smooth differences over transferring the investigation from the NTSB to the FBI. Ultimately, Hall emerged to announce that the FBI was not taking over the investigation Tuesday after all.
Publicly at least, Hall and others insisted the Egyptians were cooperating fully with the probe. “They just wanted to take the time to look over the material a little more closely,” said one official, referring to the cockpit tapes.
Still, there were some indications that the Egyptians were resisting more strenuously than the official line would suggest. If an Egyptian citizen is ultimately blamed, the Egyptian government wants to be involved in the process, one official said.
One source of the delay may be the conflicting interpretations that Americans and Egyptians are placing on the words uttered before the plane went down.
“Different people are now interpreting whether it is innocuous or would only be said if there was a problem,” a U.S. government source said.
Devout Muslims often recite prayers on airplanes, and indeed, throughout the day. And Egyptians said the short phrase would have been said by a Muslim sensing disaster, not causing it.
“It’s only natural that our pilots, whether Muslim or Christian, say a prayer to God when they see disaster looming,” said Abdel Azim Sidqi, the airline’s deputy spokesman. “Who else do you beg to save you but God?”
Some family members of the crew accused American officials of attempting to find a scapegoat.
“A lot of people pray on planes,” said Walid el-Batouti, nephew of Gameel el-Batouti. “(The Americans) are looking for someone to blame. Now they say `Look, Islamic prayer.’ “
FBI and NTSB officials emphasized that the handoff of the investigation, assuming it does occur, will amount largely to a shift in focus, since the FBI already has been working closely with the safety board.
The mission and culture of the FBI and the NTSB are markedly different. The NTSB investigates the cause of accidents to recommend how they can be avoided.
In contrast, the FBI’s goal is to bring criminals to justice. The moment it appears that a disaster was deliberate, the FBI takes over and the probe assumes the character of a homicide investigation.