EgyptAir Flight 990 was a scheduled flight from Los Angeles International Airport to Cairo International Airport, with a stop at John F. Kennedy International Airport, New York City. On October 31, 1999, the Boeing 767 operating the route crashed into the Atlantic Ocean about 60 miles (100 km) south of Nantucket Island, Massachusetts, killing all 217 passengers and crew on board, making it the deadliest aviation disaster for EgyptAir. Since the crash occurred in international waters, it was investigated by the Egyptian Ministry of Civil Aviation's Civil Aviation Agency (ECAA) and the American National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) under International Civil Aviation Organization rules. Since the ECAA lacked the resources of the NTSB, the Egyptian government asked the American government to have the NTSB handle the investigation.
Two weeks after the crash, the NTSB proposed that it hand the investigation over to the United States Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), as all of the evidence that they had collected up until that point suggested that a criminal act had taken place, and that the crash was the result of an intentional act. The Egyptian authorities refused to accept this idea, and repeatedly declined the proposal to hand the investigation over to the FBI. As a result, the NTSB was forced to continue the investigation alone, despite it falling outside their investigative purview.
The NTSB found that the cause of the accident was the airplane's departure from normal cruise flight and subsequent impact with the Atlantic Ocean "as a result of the relief first officer's flight control inputs". However they were ultimately unable to determine any specific reason for his alleged actions. The ECAA independently concluded that the incident was caused by mechanical failure of the aircraft's elevator control system. The Egyptian report suggested several possibilities for the cause of the accident, focusing on the possible failure of one of the right elevator's power control units. However, the NTSB continues to dispute the findings of the ECAA report, claiming that there is no possible explanation for the flight's final movements, other than an intentional human act.
Background
Aircraft
The aircraft involved was a Boeing 767-366ER, serial number 24542, registered as SU-GAP, named Thuthmosis III after a pharaoh from the 18th Dynasty. The aircraft had logged approximately 33,219 airframe hours and 7,556 takeoff and landing cycles. The aircraft, a stretched, extended-range version of the standard 767, was the 282nd 767 built. It was delivered to EgyptAir as a new aircraft on September 26, 1989, and was equipped with two Pratt & Whitney PW4060 engines.
Cockpit crew
Flight 990's cockpit crew consisted of 57-year-old Captain Ahmed El-Habashi, 36-year-old First Officer Adel Anwar, who had switched assignments with another pilot so he could return home in time for his wedding, 52-year-old relief Captain Raouf Nour El Din, 59-year-old relief First Officer Gameel Al-Batouti, and the airline's chief pilot for the Boeing 767, Captain Hatem Rushdy. Captain El-Habashi was a veteran pilot who had been with EgyptAir for 36 years and had accumulated about 14,400 total flight hours, more than 6,300 of which were on the 767. Relief First Officer Al-Batouti had close to 5,200 flight hours in the 767 and a total of roughly 12,500 hours.
Because of the 10-hour scheduled flight time, the flight required two complete flight crews, each consisting of one captain and one first officer. EgyptAir designated one crew as the "active crew" and the other as the "cruise crew", sometimes also referred to as the "relief crew". While no formal procedure specified when each crew flew the aircraft, the active crew customarily made the takeoff and flew the first four to five hours of the flight. The cruise crew then assumed control of the aircraft until about one to two hours before landing, when the active crew returned to the cockpit and assumed control of the aircraft. EgyptAir designated the captain of the active crew as the pilot-in-command of the flight.
While the cruise crew was intended to take over far into the flight, relief first officer Al-Batouti entered the cockpit and recommended that he relieve command first officer Anwar 20 minutes after takeoff. Anwar initially protested, but eventually relented.
Passengers
The flight was carrying 203 passengers from seven countries: Canada, Egypt, Germany, Sudan, Syria, the United States, and Zimbabwe. Of the 217 people on board, 100 were American, 89 were Egyptian (75 passengers, 14 crew), 21 were Canadian, and seven were of other nationalities. 54 of the American passengers (of whom many were elderly) were booked with the tour group Grand Circle Travel for a 14-day trip to Egypt. Of the 203 passengers, 32 boarded in Los Angeles; the rest boarded in New York. Four were nonrevenue EgyptAir crew members. Included in the passenger manifest were 33 Egyptian military officers returning from a training exercise; among them were two brigadier generals, a colonel, a major, and four other air force officers. After the crash, newspapers in Cairo were prevented by censors from reporting the officers' presence on the flight.
Flight details
At 1:20 am EST (06:20 UTC), the aircraft took off from JFK's runway 22R.
At 1:44, the flight reached its cruising altitude of 33,000 feet. At 1:48, captain El-Habashi left the cockpit and went to the lavatory. During that time, relief first officer Al-Batouti was alone in the cockpit. At 1:48:39, he began to exclaim, "I rely on God," and, at 1:49:45, disengaged the autopilot. The autopilot-disengagement warning was not heard on the CVR, indicating that the autopilot was disengaged manually, and, for the next 10 seconds, the aircraft remained in straight and level flight.
First dive and recovery
At 1:49:53, the throttles of both engines were moved to idle, and, 1 second later, the aircraft entered an increasingly steep dive, resulting in weightlessness (zero-g) throughout the cabin. Despite this, the captain was able to fight the lack of gravity and re-enter the cockpit. The speed of the 767 was now dangerously close to the sound barrier, exceeding its design limits and beginning to weaken its airframe. At 1:50:19, the flight reached its maximum rate of descent, 39,000 feet (12,000 m) per minute. Between 1:50:21 and 1:50:23, as the captain began to pull back on his control column, relief first officer Al-Batouti moved the start levers for both engines from the "run" to the "cutoff" position, shutting off fuel flow to the engines. Immediately afterwards, the captain pushed both throttles to their maximum position, but this had no effect, due to the engines' fuel supply having been cut off. The captain then deployed the speedbrakes, which slowed the aircraft's dive, bringing it back to a safer speed. Without fuel, both engines then ran down to a stop, causing the aircraft to lose all electrical power, including to both flight recorders and the aircraft's transponder. The flight's last secondary radar signal was received at 1:50:34. The Flight Data Recorder (FDR) stopped at 1:50:36; the Cockpit Voice Recorder (CVR) stopped at 1:50:38, approximately when the aircraft pulled out of the first dive.
Climb, second dive, and crash
After the flight recorders stopped, all that is known from this point on is based on primary radar returns from the aircraft (produced by the reflection of radar waves from its surface) and derived from the distribution of wreckage. Radar data indicated that, at approximately 1:50:38, the aircraft entered a steep climb, presumably due to the abrupt maneuvers made by the flightcrew to recover from the dive. Between 1:50:38 and 1:51:15, the 767 climbed from 16,000 feet (4,900 m) back to 25,000 feet (7,600 m), during which time its heading changed from 80° to 140°.
At 1:51:15, the aircraft entered another steep dive, with an average descent rate of around 20,000 feet (6,100 m) per minute. At some point during the final descent, the left engine and some other small pieces of debris separated from the aircraft due to the extreme structural stresses produced during the dive. The stress placed on the airframe caused structural integrity to fail at approximately 10,000 feet. The aircraft sections impacted the ocean at approximately 1:52 am EST, with the last primary radar return from the aircraft being received at 1:52:05. All 217 people on board were killed.
Air traffic control
US air traffic controllers provided transatlantic flight-control operations as a part of the New York Air Route Traffic Control Center (referred to in radio conversations simply as "Center" and abbreviated in the reports as "ZNY"). The airspace is divided into "areas", and "Area F" was the section that oversaw the airspace through which Flight 990 was flying. Transatlantic commercial air traffic travels via a system of routes called the North Atlantic Tracks, and Flight 990 was the only aircraft at the time assigned to fly North Atlantic Track Zulu. Also, a number of military operations areas are over the Atlantic, called "warning areas", which are also monitored by New York Center, but records show that these were inactive the night of the accident.
Interaction between ZNY and Flight 990 was completely routine. After takeoff, Flight 990 was handled by three different controllers as it climbed up in stages to its assigned cruising altitude. The aircraft, like all commercial airliners, was equipped with a Mode C transponder, which automatically reported the plane's altitude when queried by the ATC radar. At 01:44, the transponder indicated that Flight 990 had leveled off at FL330. Three minutes later, the controller requested that Flight 990 switch communications radio frequencies for better reception. A pilot on Flight 990 acknowledged on the new frequency. This was the last transmission received from the flight.
The records of the radar returns then indicate a sharp descent, with the plane dropping 14,600 ft (4,500 m) in 36 seconds before its last altitude report at 06:50:29 Coordinated Universal Time (UTC; 01:50:29 Eastern Standard Time). Several subsequent "primary" returns (simple radar reflections without the encoded Mode C altitude information) were received by ATC, the last being at 06:52:05. At 06:54, the ATC controller tried notifying Flight 990 that radar contact had been lost, but received no reply. Two minutes later, the controller contacted ARINC to determine if Flight 990 had switched to an oceanic frequency too early. ARINC attempted to contact Flight 990 on SELCAL, also with no response. The controller then contacted a nearby aircraft, Lufthansa Flight 499 (LH 499), a Boeing 747 en route from Mexico City to Frankfurt, and asked the flight's crew to try to raise Flight 990, but they were unable to make radio contact, although they also reported they were not receiving any emergency locator transmitter signals. Air France Flight 439, another Boeing 747 en route from Mexico City to Paris, was then asked to overfly the last known position of Flight 990, but that crew reported nothing out of the ordinary. Center also provided coordinates of Flight 990's last known position to Coast Guard rescue aircraft.
Flight recorders
The cockpit voice recorder (CVR) recorded the captain excusing himself to go to the lavatory, followed 30 seconds later by the first officer saying in Egyptian Arabic, "Tawakkalt `ala Allah" (Arabic: توكلت على الله), which can be translated as "I put my trust in God" or "I rely on God". A minute later, the autopilot was disengaged, immediately followed by the first officer again repeating the same Arabic phrase. Three seconds later, the throttles for both engines were reduced to idle, and both elevators were moved 3° nose down. The first officer repeated "I put my trust in God" seven more times before the captain suddenly asked repeatedly, "What's happening, what's happening?" The flight data recorder (FDR) reflected that the elevators then moved into a split condition, with the left elevator up and the right elevator down, a condition that is expected to result when the two control columns are subjected to at least 50 pounds-force (220 newtons) of opposing force. At this point, both engines were shut down by moving the start levers from run to cutoff. The captain asked, "What is this? What is this? Did you shut the engines?" The captain is then recorded as saying, "get away in the engines" (this is the literal translation that appears in the NTSB transcript), followed by "shut the engines". The first officer replies "It's shut". The final recorded words are the captain repeatedly stating, "Pull with me" but the FDR data indicated that the elevator surfaces remained in a split condition (with the left surface commanding nose up and the right surface commanding nose down) until the FDR and CVR stopped recording. No other aircraft were in the area, and no indication was given that an explosion occurred on board. The engines operated normally for the entire flight until they were shut down. From the presence of a western debris field about 1,200 ft (370 m) from the eastern debris field, the NTSB concluded that the left engine and some small pieces of wreckage separated from the aircraft before water impact.
Search-and-rescue operations
The aircraft crashed in international waters, so the Egyptian government had the right to initiate its own search and rescue and investigation. Because the government did not have the resources to salvage the aircraft, the Egyptian government requested that the United States lead the investigation. The Egyptian government signed a letter formally ceding responsibility of investigating the accident to the United States.