Air Crash Investigation

Name: Air Crash Investigation
Uploaded: 2025-08-15T12:57:33+00:00
Duration: 50 min 15 s
Channel: Airplane ✈ mode

Airplane ✈ mode

5 months ago

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00:01A Boeing 767 cruises high above the Atlantic Ocean on its way to Egypt.

00:08217 people are on board.

00:12Just half an hour after takeoff, disaster strikes.

00:16The pilot and co-pilot struggle desperately for control of their aircraft.

00:22The lives of all on board will depend on these two pilots

00:26and what they do about this dive towards the ocean.

00:30I don't know how to go.

00:31I don't know how to go.

00:36We're not getting any options.

00:38We have the terrain alarm.

00:40We are in an emergency.

00:56The John F. Kennedy International Airport outside New York City

01:00is one of the busiest airports in the world.

01:03In 1999, nearly 32 million passengers fly in and out.

01:07More than 340,000 flights take off and land.

01:15Egypt Air Flight 990 is destined to be one of the most controversial ever to leave this airport.

01:20The fate of this flight challenges the strength of an international friendship between two allies

01:30and uncovers a hidden mechanical flaw in one of the world's most popular airliners.

01:34The FBI will become involved.

01:35We reviewed surveillance tapes to indicate whether or not anything unusual was loaded on that plane.

01:45Investigators in two countries developed two different theories.

01:49Was this a tragic accident or a terrible crime?

02:04Just after 1 a.m. on October the 31st, 1999, the 217 people on board Egypt Air Flight 990 are waiting for takeoff.

02:10The flight's command captain is Captain Ahmed El Habashi. He's been with Egypt Air for 36 years.

02:21The command first officer is 36-year-old Adel Anwar.

02:24He switched duty with another co-pilot so he could return home in time for his wedding.

02:30Soon be a married man.

02:32Congratulations, Adel.

02:33Thank you very much.

02:34The airline's chief pilot for the Boeing 767, Captain Hatem Rushdie, joins them in the cockpit.

02:40At 20 past 1 in the morning, First Officer Adel Anwar is going through his takeoff clearance with air traffic control.

02:48Following gateway, clear for takeoff runway 22 right, Egypt Air 990 heavy.

02:59Cabin crew advised.

03:02In the name of God, the merciful, the compassionate. Cabin crew, takeoff position.

03:07After an everyday blessing, the co-pilot assists the takeoff.

03:11For safety, both pilots push the throttles.

03:13On a flight of 10 hours, it's standard practice at Egypt Air to provide a relief crew to share the flying duties.

03:22The command crew takes off and lands. The relief crew flies the middle portion.

03:29Tonight, Captain Raouf Nur al-Din and First Officer Gamil El Batuti are the relief crew.

03:36They will take over after the first three or four hours and fly the plane until shortly before Cairo.

03:41V1, rotate.

03:49Positive rate of climb both sides.

03:511000.

03:53Egypt Air 990 heavy. Contact. Departure now. 125.7.

03:581257. Bye.

04:00A large number of passengers are senior citizens from the United States, looking forward to touring the wonders of ancient Egypt.

04:07My dad and Ginny were married in 1998, on October 23rd. And to celebrate their first anniversary, they decided to take a trip to Egypt.

04:20Anita Child's parents are retired and on their way to Egypt as well.

04:24They always had great time on these tours. They traveled frequently and so it was a pleasure trip they were looking forward to.

04:35Seeing the Holy Land especially.

04:37Maureen Sacretini and her brother John Simmermeyer enjoyed the fact that their parents loved to travel.

04:44They had been particularly fond of a program known as Elder Hostel and this particular vacation trip to visit the pyramids and the other historical sites in Egypt was an Elder Hostel trip.

04:57There are 14 of Egypt Air's experienced crew operating the flight.

05:04There are also 33 Egyptian military officers and pilots on board, returning after training with the American Armed Forces.

05:10Gamil El Batuti used to be an Egyptian Air Force flight instructor. He's now one of the oldest first officers at Egypt Air.

05:21He's so much older than the other co-pilots that out of respect they call him Captain.

05:27But some at Egypt Air think that Captain El Batuti has been coasting too long on the favors of old friends.

05:36Just over 20 minutes after takeoff, El Batuti is about to leave his seat.

05:44Former National Transportation Safety Board investigator Greg Phillips became an expert on the events of this flight.

05:50The relief first officer who would have been expected to come to the cockpit somewhere during the later part of the flight, halfway or wherever he was comfortable,

05:59wherever the normal change would have been, came into the cockpit about 20 minutes after takeoff.

06:08Hello, Jimmy. How are you? How are you, sir? What's new?

06:11What's new?

06:13I... I slept, I swear.

06:15Just wait. Let me tell you something. I'm not going to sleep at all. I might come sit for two hours and then...

06:21But I... I... I slept. I slept.

06:24You mean you're not going to get up? You will get up. Go and take some rest and come back.

06:28You should have told me this. You should have told me this, Captain Gamal. You should have said, Adele...

06:33Did I even see you?

06:34I will work first. Just leave me a message.

06:36The younger first officer seems surprised that El Batuti wants to replace him so early in the flight.

06:42I'm not sleeping. So you take your time sleeping and when you wake up, whenever you wake up, you come back, Captain, okay?

06:49I'll come either way.

06:51Come and work the last few hours and that's all?

06:53It's not like that. That's not the point. Look, if you want to sit here, there's no problem.

06:59I'll come back to you. I'll go get something to eat and come back, alright?

07:03Fine, fine. Look here. Why don't you go... Why don't they bring your dinner to you here and then I'll go sleep, okay?

07:10That's good. Okay, with your permission, Captain.

07:13And with that, El Batuti leaves to get his meal.

07:21Do you see how he does whatever he pleases?

07:26Do you know where that is?

07:27Captain El Habashi senses his first officer's resentment and tries to smooth over the situation.

07:34Are you a youngster?

07:36Anwar wonders if El Batuti wants to take over because he may not want to work with Relief Captain Noor El Deen.

07:42Doesn't he want to work with Raouf or what?

07:46It's possible. It's possible. God knows.

07:48But look, you shouldn't get upset, right? By this prophet, he's just talking nonsense.

07:55That's it.

07:58Everything's under control.

08:00Okay, Chief. Thanks a day.

08:02First Officer Anwar concedes and is ready to hand over to El Batuti.

08:06Normally, this is the most relaxed, easy part of a long flight for pilots and passengers alike.

08:17The highly automated aircraft systems will take care of the flying for several hours.

08:22It's very unusual for an airplane flying over the Atlantic at night time to encounter any kind of difficulties.

08:28We normally expect accidents to happen in an approach or landing or near airports

08:34and very seldom do we get anything out over the ocean in the middle of the night.

08:40Excuse me, Jimmy, while I take a quick trip to the toilet.

08:43Go ahead, please.

08:44Before it gets crowded.

08:45While they're still eating.

08:47I'll be back to you.

08:52Before the captain returns, disaster will strike Egypt Air Flight 990.

08:58The fate of everyone on board will be in the hands of the co-pilot,

09:02the man who shouldn't be here in the first place.

09:13On a Boeing 767 bound for Cairo, Egypt Air's Flight 990 appears to be cruising smoothly over the Atlantic.

09:21The relief first officer, Gamil El Batuti, is alone in the cockpit, while the captain has gone to the washroom.

09:26But then the plane dips, plunging down.

09:33The nose pitches down, creating zero-G weightlessness throughout the aircraft.

09:39This airplane basically started at 1G, which is what we'd expect for level cruise flight.

09:44As you push the nose down, as if you would be cresting the top of a hill in a car at a high speed that drops away,

09:51you'd feel the airplane fall away from you, and you would start to feel a little light in the seat,

09:57and as the dive progressed, you would feel a little bit lighter yet.

10:00I rely on God.

10:05Whatever the first officer is intending, he says nothing except this phrase again and again.

10:12Captain El Habashi fights the disorientation of zero gravity, desperately trying to return to the cockpit.

10:18An American journalist living in France studied this flight extensively.

10:2816 seconds after the dive began, when the airplane had gone into zero-G and into negative-G,

10:34and was at an extreme angle, the captain somehow made his way back into the cockpit.

10:39How he did that physically, I will never know.

10:44Warning signals indicate the dive is exceeding the maximum speed allowed for the plane,

10:50taking them to 99% of the speed of sound.

10:57This far past the plane's design limits, the stresses on the airframe are pulling it apart.

11:05What's happening?

11:06What's happening?

11:10Captain El Habashi pulls back hard on his control column.

11:22Then he tries to use the engines to power their way out of the dive,

11:26by pushing forward on the throttles, but he gets nothing.

11:31You shut up the engines?

11:32You shut up!

11:33You shut up!

11:34Desperate, the captain deploys the speed brakes,

11:37panels standing up from the wings, in an effort to slow the dive.

11:39The dive is slowing, back from the brink of the sound barrier.

11:55The dive goes on, but the nose is coming up.

11:57In just seconds they go from zero-g to double the force of gravity.

12:02Captain El Habashi struggles to level the plane, and pulls back hard on the control column.

12:07The 767's dive begins to slow.

12:11Pull with me!

12:12You shut up the engine, Paul!

12:13In seconds the engines stop, and the power goes off, plunging the aircraft into darkness.

12:27Here the cockpit voice recorder and the flight data recorder stop.

12:30No one knows what happened in the plane during the next two minutes, but radar tracks its path.

12:37The plane is climbing again.

12:39Up from about 5,000 meters to over 7,500 meters, as the aircraft structure is weakened by the stresses of abnormal speeds and maneuvers.

12:48Then the aircraft falls into another terrifying dive.

12:55Stressed beyond endurance, the left engine is ripped from the plane.

13:01At 1.52 a.m., flight 990 disappears from radar screens, crashing into the surface of the Atlantic Ocean, some hundred kilometers off the American coast.

13:23Coast Guard Search and Rescue get a call at 2.15 a.m. A plane has disappeared, and Coast Guard vessels are called to the scene.

13:34The U.S. merchant marine training vessel King's Pointer is first to arrive.

13:40Just as the day was dawning, we noticed oil in the water.

13:44That was the first indication, so we turned the ship around back into the oil, and about as soon as we turned around we started seeing debris rise up to the surface.

13:50In Heliopolis, a Cairo suburb, Captain Al-Habashi's daughter can only guess what her father went through.

13:58Can you imagine if you have a beloved one, a father, a daughter, or a brother, facing all the horrors of finding himself falling from 36,000 feet suddenly,

14:16trying to save his life, his colleagues' lives, the people, the passengers.

14:26In a home in Maryland, a sleepy Sunday morning takes a tragic turn.

14:30I had woken up for some reason at 5.30 in the morning, and we were flipping on the TV to check the weather, and we were deciding what mass we were going to be going to.

14:39It was Sunday.

14:41And immediately on CNN, they had Flight 990 missing, and I was in total shock.

14:47I ran down to my refrigerator where I had my parents' itinerary, and I ripped it off and just started sobbing uncontrollably.

14:55I was screaming. I didn't know what to do.

14:57We located a significant debris field, and that we have concentrated our search efforts since then on about a 36 square mile of area about 50 miles south of Nantucket.

15:10At the end of October, the waters of the North Atlantic are so cold that normal life expectancy is about five to six hours.

15:23In Cairo, relief captain Raouf Nur-El-Din's daughter, May, clung to hope for her father.

15:28I was talking to myself, trying to convince myself that my father was not on this plane, and if he's on this plane, he will be safe, because my father was an Air Force pilot.

15:43He had a very good experience, and I thought maybe if the plane crashed, he will be able to be in a safe place and to swim and to go to any land.

15:58At the crash site, all that's left is pieces. Within hours, authorities know there's little hope for survivors.

16:08We believe at this point that it is in everyone's best interest to no longer expect that we will find survivors in this case.

16:18Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak reaches out to a stricken nation. This is the worst air crash in Egypt's history.

16:25I was shocked. It's a big tragedy for us. And I give my condolences to all the passengers, to the families, to the families of the Cruz, for being lost in this tragedy.

16:38And I have contact with President Clinton and others. And he's giving good support for trying to find, investigate, see what was the reason.

16:48The American president would answer his ally with a commitment.

16:51And I spoke earlier with President Mubarak of Egypt today to express my condolences and assure him that we would be working together closely until this matter is resolved.

17:03We do not know what caused this tragedy.

17:10In Northern Indiana, music historian Jim Brokaw learned what happened to his father and stepmother.

17:15One of the many things that I felt on that first horrible morning was the sense that people all over the world were confronting the same horrible circumstances that I was and had the same sense of helplessness and disorientation that I did.

17:34Shocked and grieving, relatives arrive at Newport, Rhode Island. They will seek answers and share comfort.

17:41There were one hundred Americans, eighty-nine Egyptians, twenty-one Canadians, and seven victims of other nationalities on board.

17:58They're all asking, what caused this tragedy?

18:02Teams of investigators will pursue that question for years to come.

18:07We are beginning what may be a long investigation, and we are prepared to do what it takes to find the answers to the questions we are seeking.

18:21In Washington, Greg Phillips from the National Transportation Safety Board leads the investigation into this crash.

18:27From the very beginning, we realized it was a very difficult case. The airplane was in cruise, night-time, out over the ocean, and when it went into the ocean, there was just a little bit of floating debris, but we had to recover the airplane from the bottom of the ocean to begin the investigation.

18:43The job of finding the black boxes would be difficult. The water is about 70 meters deep, and the tremendous force of the crash has smashed the locator beacons off the boxes.

18:55In this case, both the underwater locators, which are called Ingers, which help us locate the boxes underwater, were detached. So we had an extra difficult job in trying to find the actual boxes where the recording material was contained.

19:11Nine days after the crash, the U.S. Navy's unmanned submarine deep drone recovers the first of the two black boxes, the flight data recorder, which stores information about what the aircraft and its systems were doing.

19:25Four days later, the second black box, the cockpit voice recorder, lands on the deck, and is carefully transported to the NTSB laboratories.

19:35The cockpit voice recorder captures all sounds in the cockpit for the last 30 minutes of the flight.

19:46The black boxes are protected to withstand impacts of 3,400 times the force of gravity.

19:55The recovery of the cockpit voice recorder provided a gripping and bewildering picture of the last minutes of a disaster.

20:05Here, investigators hope, is the key to unlock the mystery of Flight 990.

20:13Translating the Arabic spoken in the cockpit is a top priority at NTSB headquarters.

20:17The cockpit voice recorder was good quality. It was easily usable and translatable by the investigation team.

20:26The cockpit voice recorder is always just a piece of the investigation that fits many other pieces of the puzzle.

20:31It goes along with flight data, recorded data, examination of the wreckage, and all the other aspects of the investigation.

20:37On major investigations, like the crash of Egypt Air 990, the NTSB works routinely with the FBI.

20:47The physical evidence has to be managed in case it's needed in court.

20:50Former FBI assistant director Lou Shaliro is a veteran investigator and no stranger to air crashes.

21:00By the time Egypt Air occurred, we were fairly adept at looking at airline disasters, particularly with the view of developing whether or not a terrorist incident or a criminal act had occurred.

21:10The FBI checked for evidence of bombs, terrorists or terrorist targets on the flight.

21:17Trying to determine luggage against the passenger list and whether or not there was anything unusual in the manifest.

21:24Whether or not the people that loaded the plane could recall anything that would have caused them concern.

21:29We reviewed surveillance tapes to indicate whether or not anything unusual was loaded on that plane.

21:34We had no evidence at all of any explosive device on board Egypt Air that night.

21:41At the NTSB, American investigators found no fault in the aircraft from studying the flight data recorder.

21:48But Egypt's members of the investigation team insisted that not all the evidence was in.

21:54Much of the wreckage was still in storage on Rhode Island.

21:59They hoped the cause of the crash can be found here.

22:02Egypt's representatives search for any possible mechanical cause for the crash.

22:08While they search, other theories are pursued.

22:11A study into the causes of airline crashes published in January 2001 points to pilot error as the cause of one third of these accidents.

22:21It also finds a strong connection between bad weather and pilot error.

22:25But the crash of Egypt Air 990 occurred in clear weather with veteran pilots.

22:32What happened in the cockpit would divide the investigation and fuel an international controversy.

22:37October 1999, Egypt Air flight 990 crashes into the Atlantic Ocean killing all 217 people on board.

22:49The investigation develops in two directions, fault in the airplane and pilot action.

22:55Rumors swirl about what or who may have caused this terrible crash.

23:02One of the key questions, why was the relief first officer in the cockpit hours earlier than expected?

23:09He was supposed to replace Adel Anwar much later in the flight.

23:12But in Cairo, Adel Anwar's older brother Tarak has no problem with Adel being replaced in the cockpit.

23:22Suppose I am with one of my friends and we are travelling in a car and he asks me if he can drive instead of me.

23:28Is this going to be a problem?

23:30For example, if Adel didn't get enough sleep and Captain Jamil told him,

23:34let me fly as a plane instead of you and you go rest. There is no problem with that.

23:41When the actions in the cockpit are put together with the voices recorded,

23:45a timeline emerges that indicates a series of initially bewildering decisions.

23:53I'll be back to you.

23:55The timeline reveals that after Captain El Habashi leaves the cockpit,

23:59there's a series of sounds whose meaning can only be guessed at.

24:02Control it.

24:09And then the relief first officer disconnects the autopilot.

24:16I rely on God.

24:18Released from the autopilot's control, the plane starts to descend, rolling to the left.

24:26Egypt's experts described El Batuti's decision to shut off the autopilot

24:29as a possible reaction to an unusual movement of the aircraft, prompting him to take manual control.

24:38However, the leader of the NTSB investigation disagrees.

24:43We found no reason for the autopilot to be disconnected by faults or failure in the airplane.

24:47Normally, all aircraft movements are meant to keep passengers comfortable as though they were on the ground.

24:54After switching off the autopilot, El Batuti pushes his control column forward, lowering the elevator panels.

25:02So the flight data recorder indicates to the NTSB.

25:07Then he pulls the throttles back, reducing engine power.

25:11This causes the plane to die.

25:14Egypt's investigators say El Batuti was not trying to crash the plane.

25:18And there may have been an elevator failure which he could not overcome.

25:23Strangely, there is no discussion of a problem on the cockpit tape.

25:29When the captain made his way back to the cockpit, he asked the first officer what was going on and never received a response.

25:36As former director of aviation safety, Bernard Loeb oversaw all air crash investigations of the NTSB.

25:47It is well understood that in a cockpit, a jet transport cockpit of virtually any airline in the world,

25:56when a captain comes in and asks a question, the first officer will respond.

26:00When the captain asked his questions, Batuti did not respond.

26:07Fighting the dive, pulling his column back all the way, the captain cannot gain complete control of the elevator.

26:13So he tries the throttles to power out of the dive.

26:17He was unaware that seconds earlier the first officer had shut off the fuel to the engines.

26:23Egypt's experts say that El Batuti may have been acting out of caution.

26:30The flight data show that a low oil pressure warning appeared.

26:35That can mean the engines have flamed out.

26:38The captain may have then ordered the fuel to the engines shut off as part of the procedure for restarting the engines.

26:46Shut the engines!

26:47It's shut!

26:49The NTSB consider this possible scenario as well.

26:52The engines shut off on a two engine airplane at night over the water.

26:59We couldn't understand any reason why any emergency could cause you to shut all the power off available to the airplane when you're heading away from the nearest airport.

27:09Foremost among the Egyptian investigators scenarios was a tragic elevator failure.

27:14In Washington, at the National Transportation Safety Board, analysis of the flight data recorder indicates that Captain El Habashi was pulling back on his column to make the plane climb, while First Officer El Batuti appears to be pushing forward on his column, making the plane go down.

27:34Elevators work simply.

27:42Pull back on the column and the elevators go up, lifting the plane.

27:47Push forward and the elevator panels move down to make the plane descend.

27:51They work together, but in this case they're going in opposite directions.

27:58Egypt's experts argued that this crash could have been caused by a failure in the elevator assembly, producing an elevator hard over, a jam in the elevator controls which lock them in the down position, plunging the aircraft into an uncontrollable dive.

28:12They stated that First Officer El Batuti was working to regain control of the elevators, and added that he and Captain El Habashi were working together.

28:27If there had been an elevator failure, it could explain the First Officer's unusual performance in the cockpit.

28:34Pull.

28:35Pull.

28:36Pull.

28:38Pull.

28:39Supporting evidence is found when analyzing fragments of the wreckage in the hangar at Rhode Island.

28:44Here, investigators made a remarkable discovery.

28:48Three unusually sheared rivets.

28:52These tiny parts play an important role in the Boeing 767 elevator assembly.

28:58Egypt's consulting experts determined that the scratches in the metal surfaces of these rivets showed that they were sheared off in two different directions.

29:05One direction could be attributed to the crash.

29:12The second could indicate that the break occurred before the crash, and so may have indicated a jam in the elevators.

29:22Egypt's experts drew this to the attention of the Federal Aviation Administration, America's civil aviation regulator.

29:32Alarmed by the potential risks, the FAA ordered all bell crank rivets to be inspected on every Boeing 767 in operation around the world.

29:44The inspections uncovered 136 sheared rivets, and 34 aircraft were grounded until the fault was fixed.

29:50The FAA said the problem could result in loss of controllability of the airplane.

30:01Egypt's investigators had uncovered a credible sounding scenario, that the sheared rivets in the elevator assembly of the Boeing 767 indicated a jam that could have caused an elevator hard over that the pilots could not overcome.

30:14NTSB investigator Greg Phillips disagreed.

30:18Those are by design for the Boeing 767. The controls can be split. They're designed that way in case one of the surfaces, the control surfaces fails, so that whoever is still in control of the airplane or can control the airplane with a failed elevator.

30:32Before he became an investigative writer, William Langewisha was a commercial airline pilot.

30:50William Langewisha went into a flight simulator in order for Langewisha to test a pilot's reactions.

30:56To see an airplane going so wildly into a dive, to see the altimeters unwinding at that speed, to hear the horns and warning signals going off, is frightening.

31:10Whatever the cause of the dive, Langewisha tries a variety of responses to recover from it.

31:15Finally, they asked me to wait at the extreme 15 seconds, to sit in the 767 or any airplane, going out of control, and do nothing for 15 seconds.

31:2815 seconds is a long time. It's inconceivable. But I did it.

31:33And even at 15 seconds, even waiting 15 seconds, I was able, through no particular skill, really reacting almost as any student pilot would, to recover the airplane, recover from the dive, before the airplane exceeded its limits.

31:51No Boeing 767 has suffered from an elevator hard over and dive, before or since the crash.

32:02The aviation experts hired by Egypt developed a wide range of scenarios, citing a fault in the elevator assembly as a possible cause of the crash.

32:11Based on the data, the information we have from the testing, that was done as a group effort, with all the best thinking everybody had at the time, we could not make this airplane do what it did with any of the failure scenarios that were presented to us.

32:26While mechanical failure scenarios were exhausted, and terrorism was excluded, the FBI continued to dig into the life of First Officer Gamil El Batuti.

32:40Less than three weeks after the disaster, news media report that in the final moments before the crash, El Batuti said,

32:47I have made my decision, I put my faith in God, causing many to believe he might be an Islamic militant bent on destruction.

32:56But the translation was incorrect.

32:59From our initial review of Batuti's background, he was a fairly religious person.

33:04But I don't think we had anything to determine that his religious beliefs were radical or beyond what would have been a normal religious person.

33:14What had Batuti said? And what does it mean?

33:20Egyptian professor Amin Bonar teaches Arabic at Georgetown University in Washington.

33:25It means, I depend, I rely, I trust, and Allah is God.

33:40It means, I rely, I rely, I depend on whatever I'm going to be embarking on.

33:50People use it when they start the trip, when they start driving, going back home, you say, tawakkal to Allah.

33:58When you have an exam, you begin by saying, tawakkal to Allah.

34:02It's a very positive phrase.

34:05So it's not the kind of phrase that anyone would be using before they commit a crime.

34:11Or before they commit suicide.

34:15Tawakkal to Allah.

34:16To say this common phrase once was normal, but El Batuti repeated it 11 times.

34:23What's happening?

34:25I expect that Captain Batuti would say, there is a fire in the engines, something stopped, I can see something's hitting the plane, anything like that.

34:40But he go on endlessly saying, tawakkal to Allah, this is not logic.

34:47For the El Batuti family, their grief would be compounded by the need to defend their father's honor.

34:53When he died, the one thing we had to reassure us was that he had died honorably.

35:00And now they're trying to take that away from us.

35:02There is a lot of mechanical failures. Why you have only to say that it's a deliberate act? No mechanical, no weather. No mechanical, no weather. So why? Because he's an Egyptian pilot.

35:15Chairman Jim Hall allowed that it could have been a criminal act rather than an accident. The investigation could end up in the hands of the FBI alone.

35:22It is only prudent for the National Transportation Safety Board to consult with these experts and officials to fully evaluate this information prior to any final decision on whether the responsibility for this investigation should transfer to the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

35:45Egypt's President Hosni Mubarak, formerly commander of the Egyptian Air Force, had known Gamil El Batuti, according to his nephew Walid.

35:55Mubarak asked President Bill Clinton to intercede to keep the crash from becoming an FBI matter.

36:01Since the crash, Walid El Batuti, nephew of Gamil, has become the El Batuti family spokesman.

36:07You have to understand that the highest ranking in this country, which is the Egyptian president, was an Air Force pilot. And he was asked, and he says, according to my experience, it's in the tail unit. Something happened there. It's not suicide. It could be either a mechanical failure, a manufacturing failure, something.

36:29In America, the FBI focuses on Gamil El Batuti and the question of motive.

36:37The FBI would learn about the man in control of Egypt Air 990, interviewing colleagues and friends, discovering a dark side to Gamil El Batuti.

36:46Investigating the cause of the crash of Egypt Air 990, the spotlight falls on the character and history of relief first officer Gamil El Batuti.

36:59He was 59 years old, approaching 60, had never risen above the rank of first officer. That may have caused him some animosity towards Egypt Air.

37:08Had some personal issues in his own life, in terms of financial, some issues in terms of his family members being sick, needing medical attention.

37:19They've used the daughter and the accusation as they said she was sick and that's why maybe he committed suicide.

37:27Let me, can I, can, before we go to this, I will give you the reason. First, the doctors have already, on that particular flight, have already told them that your daughter is going positive with the medication and everything is going fine.

37:40And he was extremely happy. He was so excited to come back.

37:44Gamil El Batuti was bringing her medical records back that night, among other things.

37:50Okay, he bought tires for his son and an argument went on in the phone between him and his son.

37:58My father called me to come to the airport because he could not carry all four tires himself.

38:04He says, listen, I carry your tires all the way from the States. You don't want to come and carry it from the airport. It's a very natural thing. A man is going to commit suicide. Why would he do this?

38:16In New York, the FBI continued their investigation at the Hotel Pennsylvania, where Egypt Air had a block booking of about 50 rooms for their crews.

38:24The investigation that the FBI was able to do, as far as Batuti's background, probably spanned a period of about a year or so, at least from the records that we were able to obtain and from the interviews we did at the various places that he stayed.

38:42So he did have, I think, a propensity to engage in behavior with some of the hotel people in terms of sexual misconduct.

38:48Hey, pretty lady, where did you get to?

38:53Which, you know, at the time really appeared to be totally out of the realm of what was normal for a person of that status to do.

39:00A husband and father of five, Gamil El Batuti was notorious for leering at and bothering female guests and hotel staff.

39:08The FBI learned that two years before the crash, two young women reported that he called them on their hotel room phone, telling them to look out the window across the courtyard.

39:19You have a good time too.

39:21When they did, they saw El Batuti exposing himself and reported the incident to hotel security.

39:27His provocative behavior would continue.

39:29A hotel maid told the FBI that the night before the crash of Egypt Air 990, El Batuti had sexually harassed her again.

39:40No, I want to talk to you, because look, I give you a hundred dollars if you just come to my room.

39:44I'm not here for that.

39:45Oh, sure.

39:46I'm here to work. Just leave me alone.

39:48Don't be like that.

39:49When the maid reported the approach, another addition was made to the hotel's record of sexual harassment of guests and staff by El Batuti.

39:56The allegation of the hotel, as far as they said, it happened way before, not one day before the flight.

40:04Not one day before the flight as has been mentioned.

40:09The hotel maid told the FBI the incident took place on October the 29th, 1999, the day before the flight.

40:17Three months after the FBI began investigating El Batuti, an Egypt Air flight landed in London.

40:24The plane's captain requested political asylum in the United Kingdom.

40:30He claimed to have information about the cause of the crash of Egypt Air 990, and he feared reprisals in Egypt.

40:37Captain Hamdi Tahar was a colleague of Gamil El Batuti, and he was walking away from his wife, his family and his country.

40:46The FBI sent a special agent, and along with a British security officer, he interviewed Captain Tahar.

40:53Were you aware of El Batuti displaying sexually inappropriate behaviour?

41:01Yes. This is very important.

41:04I heard it from pilots who I trust.

41:08Batuti got into trouble for sexual misbehaviour in New York, with maids, and following women and so on.

41:16The airline tolerated this for a while, and they told him several times, maybe you can get away with this normally.

41:27But this is America. You represent our country. You cannot do these things.

41:33Captain Tahar's information was second hand, but his description of El Batuti meeting with the airline's chief pilot was intriguing.

41:42Khartem Rushdie went to see Batuti the night they took flight 990.

41:48They had a meeting in a hotel.

41:51He told him that what he had done could not be covered up, and something had to be done.

41:59The flight back to Cairo from New York would be his last flight.

42:03Camille, we go back many years together. But this will be your last flight to the United States.

42:13He would not be flying to America anymore.

42:17Batuti had just had these big privileges taken away from him, and he was humiliated.

42:24So, I think that what happened was this. He must have said to himself, if this is going to be my last flight, it will be Khartem Rushdie's last flight also.

42:40Certainly within various corporations where people bring weapons into the office and attempt to take revenge against people that they feel have aggrieved them.

42:49Perhaps Batuti felt that Egypt Air had been the cause of some of his issues, and unfortunately in this case it was the kind of office that was flying at 33,000 feet.

43:00The FBI provides Tahar's interviews to the NTSB.

43:04Egyptian officials asked for another Egypt Air pilot to be interviewed.

43:07Mohammed Badrawi had known El Batuti for 40 years.

43:12Interviewed at the NTSB, he described discussing with Captain Rushdie what to do about El Batuti's behaviour.

43:20Do you know if Hatem Rushdie was aware of this situation with Batuti?

43:25Well, of course he knew. But he pretended not to know, I think, because Hatem Rushdie is the chief pilot.

43:31Badrawi confirms that Hatem Rushdie is upset about El Batuti's harassment of women at the hotel. So Badrawi takes Rushdie's concerns to his old friend.

43:41And if he didn't listen to you, what did you tell him was going to happen?

43:44Nothing much really. You see, he was on his way out. We don't normally touch people when they're approaching 60.

43:52I know, I know. I'm not saying that you are doing something wrong. They are saying that you're doing something wrong.

43:58I know you are my friend.

43:59We have a little patience and then they're out.

44:05Badrawi would ask Rushdie to be patient with his old friend, considering that El Batuti only had three months to go before retirement.

44:13We have been in the Air Force for 40 years. All we need is a few more months.

44:20Badrawi's interview confirmed that Rushdie did believe El Batuti's behavior had to be dealt with, and he denied Tahar's claim of a meeting between the two on the night of the crash.

44:31But Captain Tahar was not done. He had another compelling story to add.

44:37In London, an Egyptian pilot has requested political asylum and is offering an insider's view of the most controversial tragedy in the history of Egypt Air.

44:52Captain Tahar revealed to the FBI how Egypt Air briefed its pilots about the crash.

44:57When they had done the transcripts of the cockpit voice recorder, the Egypt Air chief of operations called all flight group to a special meeting in Cairo and told us the facts.

45:11Just the facts. No commentary. No explanation of any technical problem.

45:18He did not say anything, but all we pilots realized that this was not an accident.

45:28And then he told us not to talk to anyone about it.

45:32Don't talk to your family. Don't talk on the phone. Don't talk to each other, he told us.

45:38All of us realized that Batuti had done this on purpose.

45:45For the American families involved, this was a case of 216 murders and one suicide.

45:54In Egypt, big, close, extended families combined with a strong religious faith to deny that Egyptians commit suicide.

46:02The story has many sides.

46:07It has to do with religion. It has to do with beliefs. It has to do with beliefs. It has to do with culture.

46:16I think until today, still in the Egyptian culture, people don't believe that Muslims or that Egyptians or that people coming from that culture commit suicide.

46:32Cultural differences were not the only impediments to this investigation.

46:37One of the difficulties that we did have was that when we went over to Egypt and attempted to really get into his background,

46:44it became a very sensitive issue for the Egyptian government.

46:47FBI efforts to learn about El Batuti's personal life and family relations would be stymied.

46:53It became almost to the point where we were never really able to develop all the things that we needed to get at.

47:00Finally, on March the 21st, 2002, after a nearly $10 million investigation over two years and five months, the NTSB publishes its report and determines that...

47:14The probable cause of the Egypt Air Flight 990 accident is 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.

47:30The Egyptian Civil Aviation Authority responded angrily and their response read in part...

47:37It is obvious that the NTSB has not done the type of professional accident investigation expected by the Egyptian government.

47:46The NTSB's former director of aviation safety takes exception to the Egyptian view.

47:51What was unprofessional was the insistence by the Egyptians in the face of irrefutable evidence to anyone who knows anything about investigating airplane accidents and who knows anything about aerodynamics and airplanes was the fact that this airplane was intentionally flown into the ocean.

48:17No scenario that the Egyptians came up with or that we came up with in which there were some sort of mechanical failure in the elevator control system would either match the flight profile or was a situation in which the airplane was not recoverable.

48:40Like many of his countrymen, the loyal nephew cannot believe his uncle Gamil was a mass murderer.

48:48This is a simple plane crash.

48:52It was put and made like this for no reason.

48:58It shows that it's a cover up.

49:02Greg Phillips takes pride in having thoroughly investigated every lead and every scenario.

49:07When we sign on to be accident investigators, we do it with the idea that we're going to keep the next one from happening, not to cover up one that did because of whatever reason may be given to us.

49:20I've never known that to happen. I've never even known it to come close to happening.

49:25There continue to be differing perspectives on the crash of Egypt Air Flight 990 and unanswered questions remain for broken and damaged families.

49:35For many of them, answers to how and why this plane crashed will forever be a painful mystery.

49:40The End

49:41The End

49:42The End

49:43The End

49:44The End

49:45The End

49:46The End

49:47The End

49:48The End

49:49The End

49:50The End