‘Controlled’ Dive Began EgyptAir Fall, NTSB Says

The roller-coaster death plunge of EgyptAir Flight 990 apparently began as a “controlled descent” in the course of an otherwise routine flight, federal investigators said Wednesday.

The initial information from the Boeing 767’s battered flight data recorder intensified the urgency of finding the second of the plane’s two “black boxes,” still on the bottom of the Atlantic. The readout from the cockpit voice recorder could explain why the plane’s autopilot disconnected, under what circumstances the plane began its dive, and what caused it to pull out and climb before going into a final, fatal fall.

National Transportation Safety Board Chairman Jim Hall, whose agency is leading the investigation, called the new information “preliminary” and cautioned against drawing sweeping conclusions. However, the data indicate that the plane was not spiraling out of control.

“We cannot expand on the information we have for you at this time,” Hall said. “We await information off the cockpit voice recorder . . . that can help us put this information in context.”

Hall knocked down one of the early crash theories that a thrust reverser designed to slow a plane down once it lands might have accidentally deployed in flight. “There is no evidence [of that] in the data we have.”

NTSB officials say they are considering every possible explanation, including equipment problems, human error or a combination of the two. Also among the possibilities is a depressurization of the cockpit and passenger cabin, a hostile takeover of the flight deck, a small bomb or some other criminal act. The FBI is aiding in the investigation, but the safety-oriented NTSB remains in charge.

Hall said analysis of the recorder data showed an “uneventful flight,” with the plane cruising evenly at an altitude of 33,000 feet off the coast of Massachusetts.

At that point, the autopilot disconnected. Normally, the device would have flown Flight 990 over most of its transatlantic journey. However, an NTSB official said that pilots can and do disconnect the autopilot for any number of reasons.

About eight seconds after the autopilot disconnected, investigators said, the plane began a controlled dive that gradually steepened. The plane dropped to 19,000 feet, although it did not appear to have reached supersonic speed, as earlier radar data had indicated. The recorder stopped working about that point, and the final five to 10 seconds of data are still being analyzed, Hall said.

Previously released military radar data show that Flight 990 continued dropping to about 16,000 feet and then climbed to 24,000 feet before diving again to 10,000 feet and apparently breaking up over the sea near Nantucket Island.

A failure of the plane’s autopilot is one of the theories that have emerged about what caused the crash. An NTSB official said analysts have not been able to determine whether the autopilot turned itself off or was disconnected manually. Skeptics of this theory say the autopilot is like cruise control on a car, and its failure should not have kept the pilots from flying the aircraft.

If investigators eliminate mechanical causes, they may turn next to sabotage or terrorism.

One possibility is that a person intent on mayhem barged into the cockpit and overpowered the crew. Such occurrences are extremely rare but not unheard of.

In 1987, for example, a Pacific Southwest Airlines jet slammed into a hillside in San Luis Obispo County, Calif., killing all 43 people on board. Investigators determined that David A. Burke, a ticket agent who had been dismissed for stealing $69 in cocktail receipts, invaded the cockpit and opened fire on the pilots before taking his own life.

Burke’s motive apparently was revenge against the supervisor who fired him, who was also a passenger on that flight. Burke is presumed to have shot his ex-supervisor first, after handing him a cryptic, threatening note that was found in the wreckage on an air-sickness bag. The pistol used in the attack also was recovered.

In the case of Flight 990, authorities have said that everyone on board was screened for weapons, including a number of Egyptian military officers. The aircraft sent out no distress calls.

The Halloween morning tragedy took the lives of all 217 people aboard the jet, which began its flight in Los Angeles and stopped to pick up passengers in New York before heading across the ocean toward Cairo.

NTSB and Egyptian officials displayed the flight data recorder, still dripping water, before a roomful of cameras and reporters in Washington on Wednesday. Its bright orange outer casing was battered, but the inner “crash case” containing the digital recorder itself was in good shape.

The flight data recorder is designed to capture at least 55 different types of information, including the plane’s altitude, speed, spin and roll; when electrical power was cut off; and how the autopilot functioned.

NTSB officials hope that the cockpit voice recorder can solve the mystery of what happened to the doomed flight. Designed to capture sounds in the cockpit during the last 30 minutes of flight, the recorder has been lying beneath a heap of debris 250 feet below the surface of the ocean since the crash. A voice recorder was critical in solving the puzzle of the 1987 PSA crash in California. The sound of gunfire could be clearly heard on the tape.

Hall said heavy seas are expected today in the search area about 60 miles off Nantucket, curtailing the recovery effort. However, a good forecast for Friday and Saturday has lifted the hopes of Navy personnel, who recovered the flight data recorder Tuesday with the aid of an underwater robot.

The searchers have isolated a signal from the voice recorder and are using underwater cameras and lights to try to locate it.

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Times staff writer Eric Malnic contributed to this story.