Mourners Lose Heart, Go Home Amid Jet Search

Sixty Egyptians whose relatives were killed in the crash of EgyptAir Flight 990 returned to Cairo on Monday from the United States, saying they had lost hope of finding the bodies of their loved ones.

The family members flew aboard an EgyptAir flight from New York. They were the last of the Egyptian victims’ relatives who had gathered in Rhode Island while search teams scoured the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean for the remains of the Oct. 31 crash.

Off Newport, meanwhile, a tougher, nimbler underwater robot with a seven-jointed titanium arm was lowered into the sea to find the flight recorders that could indicate what doomed the airplane.

Searchers hoped the heavier robot, called Magnum, would succeed where another robot, the Deep Drone, failed in a two-day search of the murky, sunless depths.

More than a week after the plane plunged from 33,000 feet and killed all 217 people aboard, the cockpit voice and flight-data recorders that could hold the most complete picture of what went wrong remained 270 feet beneath the Atlantic.

The so-called black boxes are buried in debris, and whenever a piece of it is moved, sediment gets stirred up and obscures visibility. Investigators are looking into all possibilities, including mechanical failure, human error and sabotage.

Only one body has been found so far. Authorities say they do not expect to find more.

In another development, Boeing Co. said Monday that tail bolts on hundreds of its 767 jetliners might not have been properly tightened, but officials said the company could not say whether the EgyptAir 767-300, which was built in 1989, might have had faulty bolts. It said the problem poses no safety threat.

An airline customer notified Boeing on Sept. 30 that two of the 16 bolts that hold the vertical stabilizer, or tail fin, on one of its 767s hadn’t been tightened enough, said Doug Webb, a company spokesman.

Boeing declined to identify the airline but did say the plane was delivered in April 1998.