NTSB Releases Report Blaming Jet’s Copilot

The 1999 crash of an EgyptAir jumbo jet off Nantucket Island was caused by the deliberate acts of a veteran copilot, the National Transportation Safety Board said in its final report released Thursday.

As expected, the report did not attempt to explain the reasons behind the actions of Gamil El Batouty. However, as reported last week, The Times has learned that those motivations may have included revenge, murder and suicide.

The NTSB report officially concludes the investigation into the Oct. 31, 1999, crash of the Boeing 767 jet that killed all 217 people on board. The probe strained relations between the United States and Egypt, an important ally in the fight against terrorism. In documents released Thursday, the Egyptian Civil Aviation Authority rejected the NTSB report, saying it reflects “a limited and incomplete investigation and a corresponding inadequate analysis.”

The Egyptians have argued for months, despite a lack of supporting evidence, that something must have been wrong with the plane. They say Batouty, a Muslim, would never have crashed the jet in a deliberate act of suicide.

NTSB Chairwoman Marion Blakey defended the report Thursday, saying its analysis and conclusions “are firmly supported by the physical evidence and recorded data.”

The NTSB--citing radar data, air traffic control reports, cockpit voice recordings and information from the plane’s flight data recorder--said that the plane apparently functioned perfectly.

The recordings show that Batouty, alone in the cockpit, deliberately nosed the jetliner over in a steep dive, repeatedly intoning in Arabic, “I rely on God.”

When the command pilot, Capt. Mahmoud El Habashi, returned to the cockpit, Batouty resisted the captain’s efforts to pull the plane out of the dive.

Honofy Taha Mahmoud Hamdy, a former EgyptAir captain, told The Times that the crash was a vengeful act against an EgyptAir executive. Taha said Hatem Rushdy, chief of the airline’s 767 pilot group and a passenger on Flight 990, had reprimanded Batouty several hours earlier for sexual misconduct that embarrassed the company.

Taha said that the chief pilot told Batouty that he no longer would be allowed to fly on U.S. routes, which carry added prestige and extra pay.

“Rushdy had said [to him]: ‘This is your last flight,’ ” Taha said. “And Batouty’s attitude was, ‘This is the last flight for all of you too.’ ”