EgyptAir 990 Crash Remains a Mystery

The puzzling plunge of EgyptAir Flight 990 last October off the coast of New England officially remains a mystery, despite an intensive investigation by U.S. and Egyptian authorities that so far has lasted 286 days.

In releasing 1,665 pages of investigative reports Friday, the chairman of the National Transportation Safety Board said: “There is no analysis as to the cause of the crash.”

Nonetheless, parts of the documents suggest the validity of an original U.S. theory: that co-pilot Gamil Batouty may deliberately have plunged the jetliner into the Atlantic.

Egyptian authorities, who have rejected such a scenario from the beginning, insisted Friday that “there is nothing . . . to indicate that Flight 990 was intentionally crashed into the ocean.”

For relatives of the dead, Friday’s release of the reports was an incremental advance in a frustrating process.

“We’re still waiting to get some news of substance,” said Randy Garell, son-in-law of Beverly Grant, a Santa Ana woman who perished along with three fellow members of an informal card club who were en route to a Middle East vacation.

He also said it was unclear to him whether the decision not to hold a public hearing implied that investigators believe the crash was not an accident.

“The long and the short of it is we just don’t seem to be getting information of substance,” Garell said. “You’re trying to come up with a way to set this thing to rest in your mind, to get past it. We just haven’t had anything happen yet to let us do that. It’s just constant wondering.”

The transcript of the cockpit voice recorder, recovered from the crash site and made public Friday, indicates Capt. Ahmed Habashy, the pilot, apparently returning to the cockpit after a bathroom break, asked co-pilot Batouty, “What’s happening, what’s happening?” as he found the plane in a steep dive.

The flight data recorder shows that the plane’s autopilot had been turned off.

“What is this? Did you shut the engines?” asked Habashy, who then struggled to pull the plane out of the dive. The transcript did not show an immediate response.

The flight data recorder shows that just seconds before Habashy asked about the engines, first the right, then the left engine lever was switched from “run” to “cutoff.”

About a minute and a half later, the captain exhorted: “Pull with me. Pull with me. Pull with me”--just before the recording goes dead.

During these moments, Batouty repeats 10 times a prayer-like Arabic phrase rendered as “I rely on God.”

Egyptian authorities, as well as members of Batouty’s family, have strongly denied that he had any motive to commit suicide or kill hundreds of others in the process.

U.S. aviation authorities said privately that the inquiry has been handled carefully to avoid offending Egypt. Egyptian attempts to demonstrate scenarios in which Batouty could have lost control of the plane were painstakingly reviewed in Boeing simulators--without convincing results, authorities said.

However, an EgyptAir official said Friday that the accident could have been caused by malfunctions in the aircraft’s elevator control system, precipitating the plane’s steep dive.

Capt. Shaker Kelada, vice president of safety for the airline, who headed the EgyptAir team that worked closely with NTSB investigators, said that metallurgical analysis of Flight 990 wreckage showed that rivets on two of three bell cranks in the right elevator were sheared in a direction that would force the elevator down. Elevators are two small winglike surfaces on the tail assembly that control the up-or-down angle of the nose.

Kelada also criticized parts of an FBI investigation into the backgrounds of the flight’s crew members that suggested Batouty might have engaged in lewd conduct in New York. One document said that Batouty had been investigated by a New York hotel’s security staff for incidents that included exposing himself and making sexual advances to staff and guests.

Max Bowman, whose wife of 40 years, Judith, also died on the flight, said he won’t examine a CD-ROM containing the records the NTSB sent him, preferring not to “second-guess or read [between] the lines of any of the stories.”

But the Huntington Beach man added: “It’s frustrating, because there’s no closure to this thing at all for myself and my family. We just wait and put everything on the back burner until somebody comes up and says something final about what happened.”