- hace 4 horas
On 31 October 1999, EgyptAir Flight 990 crashes into the Atlantic Ocean while flying from New York City to Cairo, killing all 217 people on board. The cause of the crash is disputed: the Egyptian government claims that the crash was caused by a mechanical failure with the elevators, but the U.S. government claims the aircraft was deliberately crashed by the Relief First Officer Gameel Al-Batouti.
Categoría
📺
TVTranscripción
00:01A Boeing 767 cruises high above the Atlantic Ocean on its way to Egypt.
00:08217 people are on board.
00:11Just half an hour after takeoff, disaster strikes.
00:15The pilot and co-pilot struggle desperately for control of their aircraft.
00:21The lives of all on board will depend on these two pilots
00:25and what they do about this dive towards the ocean.
00:30I don't know how to go.
00:30I don't know how to go.
01:03The 217 people on board Egypt Air Flight 990 are waiting for takeoff.
01:09The flight's command captain is Captain Ahmed El-Habashi.
01:14He's been with Egypt Air for 36 years.
01:17The command first officer is 36-year-old Adel Anwar.
01:21He switched duty with another co-pilot so he could return home in time for his wedding.
01:26Soon be a married man.
01:28Congratulations Adel.
01:29Thank you very much.
01:30The airline's chief pilot for the Boeing 767, Captain Hatem Rushdie, joins them in the cockpit.
01:38At 20 past 1 in the morning, first officer Adel Anwar is going through his takeoff clearance with air traffic
01:44control.
01:446,000.
01:45You fly the gateway climb.
01:47Climbing to 5,000.
01:49Following gateway.
01:50Clear for takeoff.
01:51Runway 22 right.
01:52Egypt Air 990 heavy.
01:56Cabin crew advised.
01:57In the name of God, the merciful, the compassionate.
02:00Cabin crew, takeoff position.
02:02After an everyday blessing, the co-pilot assists the takeoff.
02:06For safety, both pilots push the throttles.
02:11On a flight of 10 hours, it's standard practice at Egypt Air to provide a relief crew to share the
02:16flying duties.
02:17The command crew takes off and lands.
02:20The relief crew flies the middle portion.
02:24Tonight, Captain Raouf Nur el-Din and First Officer Gamil el-Batuti are the relief crew.
02:31They will take over after the first three or four hours and fly the plane until shortly before Cairo.
02:37V1.
02:38Rotate.
02:44Positive rate of climb both sides.
02:471,000.
02:48Egypt Air 990 heavy.
02:50Contact.
02:50Departure now.
02:51125.7.
02:531257.
02:54Bye.
02:55A large number of passengers are senior citizens from the United States, looking forward to touring the wonders of ancient
03:02Egypt.
03:04My dad and Ginny were married in 1998 on October 23rd.
03:10And to celebrate their first anniversary, they decided to take a trip to Egypt.
03:16Anita Child's parents are retired and on their way to Egypt as well.
03:20They always had great time on these tours.
03:22They traveled frequently and so it was a pleasure trip they were looking forward to, seeing the Holy Land especially.
03:33Maureen Sacretini and her brother John Simmermeyer enjoyed the fact that their parents loved to travel.
03:39They had been particularly fond of a program known as Elder Hostel and this particular vacation trip to visit the
03:47pyramids and the other historical sites in Egypt was an Elder Hostel trip.
03:54There are 14 of Egypt Air's experienced crew operating the flight.
03:59There are also 33 Egyptian military officers and pilots on board, returning after training with the American Armed Forces.
04:09Gamil El Batuti used to be an Egyptian Air Force flight instructor.
04:13He's now one of the oldest first officers at Egypt Air.
04:18He's so much older than the other co-pilots that out of respect they call him Captain.
04:28Hello, Jimmy. How are you?
04:30How are you, sir?
04:31What's news?
04:33I slept, I swear.
04:35Just wait. Let me tell you something. I'm not going to sleep at all. I might come sit for two
04:40hours and then...
04:41But I... I... I slept. I slept.
04:43You mean you're not going to get up? You will get up. Go and take some rest and come back.
04:48You should have told me this. You should have told me this, Captain Gamal. You should have said, Adele...
04:53Did I even see you?
04:54I will work first. Just leave me a message.
04:57The younger first officer seems surprised that El Batuti wants to replace him so early in the flight.
05:02I'm not sleeping. So you take your time sleeping and when you wake up, whenever you wake up, you come
05:07back, Captain, okay?
05:09I'll come either way.
05:10Captain...
05:11Come and work the last few hours and that's all?
05:13It's not like that. That's not the point. Look, if you want to sit here, there's no problem.
05:19I'll come back to you. I'll go get something to eat and come back, alright?
05:23Fine, fine. Look here. Why don't you go... Why don't they bring your dinner to you here and then I'll
05:29go sleep, okay?
05:29That's good. Okay, with your permission, Captain.
05:33And with that, El Batuti leaves to get his meal.
05:41Do you see how he does whatever he pleases? Do you know where that is?
05:48Captain El Habashi senses his first officer's resentment and tries to smooth over the situation.
05:53Are you a youngster?
05:55Anwar wonders if El Batuti wants to take over because he may not want to work with Relief Captain Nur
06:00-El-Din.
06:02Doesn't he want to work with Raouf or what?
06:06It's possible. It's possible. God knows.
06:09But look, you shouldn't get upset, right?
06:11By this prophet, he's just talking nonsense.
06:15That's it.
06:18Everything's under control.
06:19Okay, Chief.
06:21Thanks a day.
06:22First Officer Anwar concedes and is ready to hand over to El Batuti.
06:29Normally, this is the most relaxed, easy part of a long flight for pilots and passengers alike.
06:37The highly automated aircraft systems will take care of the flying for several hours.
06:41Chief Air 990, roger.
06:45Excuse me, Jimmy, while I take a quick trip to the toilet.
06:48Go ahead, please.
06:49Before it gets crowded.
06:50Well, they're still eating.
06:52I'll be back to you.
06:57Before the captain returns, disaster will strike Egypt Air Flight 990.
07:02The fate of everyone on board will be in the hands of the co-pilot.
07:07The man who shouldn't be here in the first place.
07:18On a Boeing 767 bound for Cairo, Egypt Air's Flight 990 appears to be cruising smoothly over the Atlantic.
07:26The relief first officer, Gamil El Batuti, is alone in the cockpit, while the captain has gone to the washroom.
07:34But then the plane dips, plunging down.
07:39The nose pitches down, creating zero-G, weightlessness, throughout the aircraft.
07:44This airplane basically started at 1G, which is what we'd expect for level cruise flight.
07:51As you push the nose down, as if you would be cresting the top of a hill in a car
07:55at a high speed that drops away,
07:57you'd feel the airplane fall away from you, and you would start to feel a little light in the seat,
08:03and as the dive progressed, you would feel a little bit lighter yet.
08:08I rely on God.
08:11Whatever the first officer is intending, he says nothing except this phrase again and again.
08:18Captain El Habashi fights the disorientation of zero gravity, desperately trying to return to the cockpit.
08:29An American journalist living in France studied this flight extensively.
08:3316 seconds after the dive began, when the airplane had gone into zero-G and into negative-G,
08:40and was at an extreme angle, the captain somehow made his way back into the cockpit.
08:46How he did that physically, I will never know.
08:50Warning signals indicate the dive is exceeding the maximum speed allowed for the plane,
08:56taking them to 99% of the speed of sound.
09:03This far past the plane's design limits, the stresses on the airframe are pulling it apart.
09:11What's happening?
09:13I'm gone.
09:14I'm gone.
09:15I'm gone.
09:15Captain El Habashi pulls back hard on his control column.
09:28Then he tries to use the engines to power their way out of the dive,
09:31by pushing forward on the throttles, but he gets nothing.
09:36What?
09:37You shut off the engines?
09:38I'm gone.
09:40Desperate, the captain deploys the speed brakes, panels standing up from the wings,
09:45in an effort to slow the dive.
09:57The dive is slowing, back from the brink of the sound barrier.
10:01The dive goes on, but the nose is coming up.
10:04In just seconds, they go from zero-G to double the force of gravity.
10:08Captain El Habashi struggles to level the plane, and pulls back hard on the control column.
10:15The 767's dive begins to slow.
10:21Who would be?
10:22I don't know.
10:23You shut off the engine, Paul.
10:27In seconds, the engines stop, and the power goes off, plunging the aircraft into darkness.
10:33Here, the cockpit voice recorder and the flight data recorder stop.
10:37No one knows what happened in the plane during the next two minutes, but radar tracks its path.
10:43The plane is climbing again.
10:46Up from about 5,000 meters to over 7,500 meters,
10:50as the aircraft structure is weakened by the stresses of abnormal speeds and maneuvers.
10:57Then the aircraft falls into another terrifying dive.
11:04Stressed beyond endurance, the left engine is ripped from the plane.
11:21At 1.52 a.m., flight 990 disappears from radar screens, crashing into the surface of the Atlantic Ocean,
11:27some hundred kilometers off the American coast.
11:32Coast Guard search and rescue get a call at 2.15 a.m.
11:36A plane has disappeared, and Coast Guard vessels are called to the scene.
11:41The U.S. merchant marine training vessel King's Pointer is first to arrive.
11:45Just as the day was dawning, we noticed oil in the water, and that was the first indication.
11:51So we turned the ship around back into the oil, and about as soon as we turned around,
11:55we started seeing debris rise up to the surface.
11:58In Heliopolis, a Cairo suburb, Captain Al-Habashi's daughter can only guess what her father went through.
12:03Can you imagine if you have a beloved one, a father, a daughter, or a brother, facing all the horrors
12:14of finding himself falling from 36,000 feet suddenly,
12:22trying to save his life, his colleagues' lives, the people, the passengers?
12:32In a home in Maryland, a sleepy Sunday morning takes a tragic turn.
12:37I had woken up for some reason at 5.30 in the morning, and we were flipping on the TV
12:41to check the weather,
12:43and we were deciding what mass we were going to be going to. It was Sunday.
12:47And immediately on CNN, they had Flight 990 missing, and I was in total shock.
12:54I ran down to my refrigerator where I had my parents' itinerary, and I ripped it off and just started
13:00sobbing uncontrollably.
13:01I was screaming. I didn't know what to do.
13:03We located a significant debris field, and we have concentrated our search efforts since then on about a 36 square
13:12mile of area about 50 miles south of Nantucket.
13:18At the end of October, the waters of the North Atlantic are so cold that normal life expectancy is about
13:24five to six hours.
13:29In Cairo, relief captain Raouf Nur-El-Din's daughter, May, clung to hope for her father.
13:35I was talking to myself, trying to convince myself that my father was not on this plane, and if he's
13:43on this plane, he will be safe,
13:45because my father was an Air Force pilot. He had a very good experience, and I thought maybe if the
13:55plane crashed, he will be able to, you know, to be in a safe place and to swim and to
14:00go to any land.
14:05At the crash site, all that's left is pieces. Within hours, authorities know there's little hope for survivors.
14:14We believe at this point that it is in everyone's best interest to no longer expect that we will find
14:22survivors in this case.
14:24Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak reaches out to a stricken nation. This is the worst air crash in Egypt's history.
14:33The relay was shot. It's a big tragedy for us. And I give my condolences to all the passengers, to
14:40the families, to the families of the crews, for being lost in this tragedy.
14:45And I have contact with President Clinton and other agencies. And he's giving good support for trying to find, investigate,
14:54see what was the reason.
14:56The American president would answer his ally with a commitment.
15:00And I spoke earlier with President Mubarak of Egypt today to express my condolences and assure him that we would
15:07be working together closely until this matter is resolved.
15:11We do not know what caused this tragedy.
15:16In Northern Indiana, music historian Jim Brokaw learned what happened to his father and stepmother.
15:23One of the many things that I felt on that first horrible morning was the sense that people all over
15:31the world were confronting the same horrible circumstances that I was.
15:35And had the same sense of helplessness and disorientation that I did.
15:40Shocked and grieving, relatives arrive at Newport, Rhode Island.
15:45They will seek answers and share comfort.
15:48There were 100 Americans, 89 Egyptians, 21 Canadians and seven victims of other nationalities on board.
16:04They're all asking, what caused this tragedy?
16:10Teams of investigators will pursue that question for years to come.
16:15We are beginning what may be a long investigation.
16:18And we are prepared to do what it takes to find the answers to the questions we are seeking.
16:27In Washington, Greg Phillips from the National Transportation Safety Board leads the investigation into this crash.
16:35From the very beginning, we realized it was a very difficult case.
16:38The airplane was in cruise, night time, out over the ocean.
16:42And when it went into the ocean, there was just a little bit of floating debris.
16:46But we had to recover the airplane from the bottom of the ocean to begin the investigation.
16:51The job of finding the black boxes would be difficult.
16:54The water is about 70 meters deep, and the tremendous force of the crash has smashed the locator beacons off
17:01the boxes.
17:02In this case, both the underwater locators, which are called pingers, which help us locate the boxes underwater, were detached.
17:12So we had an extra difficult job in trying to find the actual boxes where the recording material was contained.
17:19Nine days after the crash, the US Navy's unmanned submarine, Deep Drone, recovers the first of the two black boxes,
17:26the flight data recorder,
17:27which stores information about what the aircraft and its systems were doing.
17:32Four days later, the second black box, the cockpit voice recorder, lands on the deck and is carefully transported to
17:39the NTSB laboratories.
17:41The cockpit voice recorder captures all sounds in the cockpit for the last 30 minutes of the flight.
17:52The black boxes are protected to withstand impacts of 3,400 times the force of gravity.
18:00The recovery of the cockpit voice recorder provided a gripping and bewildering picture of the last minutes of a disaster.
18:11Here, investigators hope, is the key to unlock the mystery of Flight 990.
18:19Translating the Arabic spoken in the cockpit is a top priority at NTSB headquarters.
18:24The cockpit voice recorder was good quality. It was easily usable and translatable by the investigation team.
18:32The cockpit voice recorder is always just a piece of the investigation that fits many other pieces of the puzzle.
18:37It goes along with flight data, recorded data, examination of the wreckage and all the other aspects of the investigation.
18:45On major investigations like the crash of Egypt Air 990, the NTSB works routinely with the FBI.
18:53The physical evidence has to be managed in case it's needed in court.
18:58Former FBI assistant director Lou Shaliro is a veteran investigator and no stranger to air crashes.
19:06By the time Egypt Air occurred, we were fairly adept at looking at airline disasters, particularly with the view of
19:13developing whether or not a terrorist incident or a criminal act had occurred.
19:17The FBI checked for evidence of bombs, terrorists or terrorist targets on the flight.
19:23Trying to determine luggage against the passenger list and whether or not there was anything unusual in the manifest,
19:30whether or not the people that loaded the plane could recall anything that would have caused them concern.
19:35We reviewed surveillance tapes to indicate whether or not anything unusual was loaded on that plane.
19:41We had no evidence at all of any explosive device on board Egypt Air that night.
19:47At the NTSB, American investigators found no fault in the aircraft from studying the flight data recorder.
19:54But Egypt's members of the investigation team insisted that not all the evidence was in.
20:01Much of the wreckage was still in storage on Rhode Island.
20:05They hope the cause of the crash can be found here.
20:09Egypt's representatives search for any possible mechanical cause for the crash.
20:14While they search, other theories are pursued.
20:17What happened in the cockpit would divide the investigation and fuel an international controversy.
20:27October 1999, Egypt Air Flight 990 crashes into the Atlantic Ocean killing all 217 people on board.
20:37The investigation develops in two directions, fault in the airplane and pilot action.
20:43Rumours swirl about what or who may have caused this terrible crash.
20:49One of the key questions, why was the relief first officer in the cockpit hours earlier than expected?
20:55He was supposed to replace Adel Anwar much later in the flight.
21:01But in Cairo, Adel Anwar's older brother Tarak has no problem with Adel being replaced in the cockpit.
21:08Suppose I am with one of my friends and we are travelling in a car and he asks me if
21:13he can drive instead of me.
21:14Is this going to be a problem?
21:16For example, if Adel didn't get enough sleep and Captain Jamil told him,
21:21let me fly the plane instead of you and you go rest.
21:24There is no problem with that.
21:27When the actions in the cockpit are put together with the voices recorded,
21:31a timeline emerges that indicates a series of initially bewildering decisions.
21:39I'll be back to you.
21:41The timeline reveals that after Captain El Habashi leaves the cockpit,
21:45there's a series of sounds whose meaning can only be guessed at.
21:51Control it.
21:54And then the relief first officer disconnects the autopilot.
22:02I rely on God.
22:04Released from the autopilot's control, the plane starts to descend, rolling to the left.
22:12Egypt's experts described El Batuti's decision to shut off the autopilot as a possible reaction to an unusual movement of
22:19the aircraft,
22:20prompting him to take manual control.
22:24However, the leader of the NTSB investigation disagrees.
22:29We found no reason for the autopilot to be disconnected by faults or failure in the airplane.
22:35Normally, all aircraft movements are meant to keep passengers comfortable, as though they were on the ground.
22:42After switching off the autopilot, El Batuti pushes his control column forward, lowering the elevator panels,
22:49so the flight data recorder indicates to the NTSB.
22:54Then he pulls the throttles back, reducing engine power.
22:58This causes the plane to dive.
23:02Egypt's investigators say El Batuti was not trying to crash the plane,
23:06and there may have been an elevator failure, which he could not overcome.
23:12Strangely, there is no discussion of a problem on the cockpit tape.
23:17When the captain made his way back to the cockpit,
23:19he asked the first officer what was going on, and never received a response.
23:26As former director of aviation safety,
23:29Bernard Loeb oversaw all air crash investigations of the NTSB.
23:33It is well understood that in a cockpit, a jet transport cockpit of virtually any airline in the world,
23:42when a captain comes in and asks a question, the first officer will respond.
23:48When the captain asked his questions, Batuti did not respond.
23:54Fighting the dive, pulling his column back all the way,
23:57the captain cannot gain complete control of the elevator,
24:00so he tries the throttles to power out of the dive.
24:04He was unaware that seconds earlier the first officer had shut off the fuel to the engines.
24:12Egypt's experts say that El Batuti may have been acting out of caution.
24:17The flight data show that a low oil pressure warning appeared.
24:21That can mean the engines have flamed out.
24:23The captain may have then ordered the fuel to the engines shut off,
24:27as part of the procedure for restarting the engines.
24:32Shut the engines! It's shut!
24:35The NTSB consider this possible scenario as well.
24:40The engines shut off on a two-engine airplane, at night, over the water.
24:45We couldn't understand any reason why any emergency could cause you to shut all the power off available to the
24:52airplane
24:53when you're heading away from the nearest airport.
24:56Foremost among the Egyptian investigators' scenarios was a tragic elevator failure.
25:04In Washington, at the National Transportation Safety Board,
25:08analysis of the flight data recorder indicates that Captain El Habashi was pulling back on his column to make the
25:13plane climb,
25:14while First Officer El Batuti appears to be pushing forward on his column, making the plane go down.
25:28Egypt's experts argued that this crash could have been caused by a failure in the elevator assembly,
25:33producing an elevator hard over, a jam in the elevator controls which lock them in the down position,
25:39plunging the aircraft into an uncontrollable dive.
25:47They stated that First Officer El Batuti was working to regain control of the elevators,
25:52and added that he and Captain El Habashi were working together.
25:58If there had been an elevator failure, it could explain the First Officer's unusual performance in the cockpit.
26:08Supporting evidence is found when analyzing fragments of the wreckage in the hangar at Rhode Island.
26:14Here, investigators made a remarkable discovery.
26:17Three unusually sheared rivets.
26:21These tiny parts play an important role in the Boeing 767 elevator assembly.
26:27Egypt's consulting experts determined that the scratches in the metal surfaces of these rivets
26:32showed that they were sheared off in two different directions.
26:38One direction could be attributed to the crash.
26:43The second could indicate that the break occurred before the crash,
26:48and so may have indicated a jam in the elevators.
26:56Egypt's experts drew this to the attention of the Federal Aviation Administration,
27:00America's civil aviation regulator.
27:04Alarmed by the potential risks, the FAA ordered all bell-crank rivets to be inspected on every Boeing 767 in
27:12operation around the world.
27:16The inspections uncovered 136 sheared rivets, and 34 aircraft were grounded until the fault was fixed.
27:24The FAA said the problem could result in loss of controllability of the airplane.
27:32Egypt's investigators had uncovered a credible-sounding scenario,
27:35that the sheared rivets in the elevator assembly of the Boeing 767 indicated a jam
27:40that could have caused an elevator hardover that the pilots could not overcome.
27:45NTSB investigator Greg Phillips disagreed.
27:49Those are by design for the Boeing 767.
27:51The controls can be split.
27:53They're designed that way in case one of the surfaces, the control surfaces, fails.
27:58So that whoever is still in control of the airplane, or can control the airplane,
28:02with a failed elevator.
28:11Before he became an investigative writer,
28:13William Langewesha was a commercial airline pilot.
28:17Flight 990's maneuvers are programmed into a flight simulator
28:20in order for Langewesha to test a pilot's reactions.
28:25To see an airplane going so wildly into a dive,
28:30to see the altimeters unwinding at that speed,
28:34to hear the horns and warning signals going off,
28:37is frightening.
28:40Whatever the cause of the dive, Langewesha tries a variety of responses to recover from it.
28:46Finally, they asked me to wait at the extreme 15 seconds,
28:50to sit in the 767 or any airplane, going out of control, and do nothing for 15 seconds.
28:5815 seconds is a long time.
29:00It's inconceivable.
29:02But I did it.
29:03And even at 15 seconds, even waiting 15 seconds,
29:08I was able, through no particular skill, really reacting as any, almost as any student pilot would,
29:14to recover the airplane, recover from the dive, before the airplane exceeded its limits.
29:22No Boeing 767 has suffered from an elevator hard over and dive, before or since the crash.
29:32Based on the data, the information we have from the testing that was done as a group effort,
29:37with all the best thinking everybody had at the time,
29:40we could not make this airplane do what it did with any of the failure scenarios that were presented to
29:45us.
29:46While mechanical failure scenarios were exhausted, and terrorism was excluded,
29:52the FBI continued to dig into the life of First Officer Gamil El Batuti.
29:59Less than three weeks after the disaster,
30:02news media report that in the final moments before the crash, El Batuti said,
30:06I have made my decision, I put my faith in God,
30:10causing many to believe he might be an Islamic militant bent on destruction.
30:14But the translation was incorrect.
30:18From our initial review of Batuti's background, he was a fairly religious person,
30:23but I don't think we had anything to determine that his religious beliefs were radical
30:27or beyond what would have been a normal religious person.
30:32What had Batuti said? And what does it mean?
30:38Egyptian professor Amin Bonar teaches Arabic at Georgetown University in Washington.
30:45Tawakkaltu means, I depend, I rely, I trust, and Allah is God.
30:59Tawakkaltu, Allah, on God, I rely, I depend in whatever I'm going to be embarking on.
31:09People use it when they start a trip, when they start driving, going back home,
31:15you say, Tawakkaltu, Allah.
31:16When you have an exam, you begin by saying, Tawakkaltu, Allah.
31:20It's a very positive phrase.
31:23So it's not the kind of phrase that anyone would be using before they commit a crime or before they
31:31commit suicide.
31:33Tawakkaltu, Allah.
31:34To say this common phrase once was normal, but El Batuti repeated it 11 times.
31:41Tawakkaltu, Allah.
31:41What's happening?
31:44I expect that Captain Batuti would say, there is a fire in the engines, something stopped, I can see something's
31:56hitting the plane, anything like that.
31:59But he go on endlessly saying, Tawakkaltu, Allah, this is not logic.
32:06For the El Batuti family, their grief would be compounded by the need to defend their father's honor.
32:13When he died, the one thing we had to reassure us was that he had died honorably.
32:18And now they're trying to take that away from us.
32:21There is a lot of mechanical failures.
32:24Why you have only to say that it's a deliberate act?
32:28No mechanical, no weather.
32:30No mechanical, no weather.
32:31So why?
32:32Because he's an Egyptian pilot.
32:33Chairman Jim Hall allowed that it could have been a criminal act rather than an accident.
32:37The investigation could end up in the hands of the FBI alone.
32:41It is only prudent for the National Transportation Safety Board to consult with these experts and officials
32:50to fully evaluate this information prior to any final decision on whether the responsibility for this investigation
33:00should transfer to the Federal Bureau of Investigation.
33:04Egypt's President Hosni Mubarak, formerly commander of the Egyptian Air Force, had known Gamil El Batuti, according to his nephew
33:12Waleed.
33:13Mubarak asked President Bill Clinton to intercede to keep the crash from becoming an FBI matter.
33:20Since the crash, Waleed El Batuti, nephew of Gamil, has become the El Batuti family spokesman.
33:26You have to understand that the highest ranking in this country, which is the Egyptian president, was an Air Force
33:34pilot.
33:34And he was asked, and he says, according to my experience, it's in the tail unit.
33:38Something happened there.
33:40It's not suicide.
33:41It could be either a mechanical failure, a manufacturing failure, something.
33:47In America, the FBI focuses on Gamil El Batuti and the question of motive.
33:54The FBI would learn about the man in control of Egypt Air 990, interviewing colleagues and friends, discovering a dark
34:03side to Gamil El Batuti.
34:10Investigating the cause of the crash of Egypt Air 990, the spotlight falls on the character and history of relief
34:16first officer Gamil El Batuti.
34:18He was 59 years old, approaching 60, had never risen above the rank of first officer that may have caused
34:24him some animosity towards Egypt Air.
34:26Had some personal issues in his own life, in terms of financial, some issues in terms of his family members
34:34being sick, needing medical attention.
34:38They've used the daughter in the accusation as they said she was sick and that's why maybe he committed suicide.
34:47Before we go to this, I will give you the reason.
34:49First, the doctors have already, on that particular flight, have already told them that your daughter is going positive with
34:57the medication and everything is going fine.
34:59And he was extremely happy. He was so excited to come back.
35:03Gamil El Batuti was bringing her medical records back that night, among other things.
35:09Okay, he bought tires for his son and an argument went on in the phone between him and his son.
35:17My father called me to come to the airport because he could not carry all four tires himself.
35:24He says, listen, I carry your tires all the way from the States. You don't want to come and carry
35:28it from the airport?
35:29It's a very natural thing. A man is going to commit suicide. Why would he do this?
35:34In New York, the FBI continued their investigation at the Hotel Pennsylvania, where Egypt Air had a block booking of
35:41about 50 rooms for their crews.
35:44The investigation that the FBI was able to do, as far as Batuti's background, probably spanned a period of about
35:51a year or so, at least from the records that we were able to obtain and from the interviews we
35:58did at the various places that he stayed.
36:00So he did have, I think, a propensity to engage in behavior with some of the hotel people in terms
36:06of sexual misconduct.
36:08Hey, pretty lady, where did you get to?
36:11Which, you know, at the time really appeared to be totally out of the realm of what was normal for
36:16a person of that status to do.
36:18A husband and father of five, Gamil El Batuti was notorious for leering at and bothering female guests and hotel
36:26staff.
36:27The FBI learned that two years before the crash, two young women reported that he called them on their hotel
36:34room phone, telling them to look out the window across the courtyard.
36:37You have a good time, too.
36:39When they did, they saw El Batuti exposing himself and reported the incident to hotel security.
36:46His provocative behavior would continue.
36:50A hotel maid told the FBI that the night before the crash of Egypt Air 990, El Batuti had sexually
36:57harassed her again.
36:58No, I want to talk to you, because look, I'll give you a hundred dollars if you just come to
37:02my room.
37:03I'm not here for that.
37:04Oh, sure.
37:04I'm here to work. Just leave me alone.
37:06Don't be like that.
37:07When the maid reported the approach, another addition was made to the hotel's record of sexual harassment of guests and
37:13staff by El Batuti.
37:16The allegation of the hotel, as far as they said, it happened way before, not one day before the flight.
37:23Not one day before the flight, as has been mentioned.
37:27The hotel maid told the FBI the incident took place on October the 29th, 1999, the day before the flight.
37:37Three months after the FBI began investigating El Batuti, an Egypt Air flight landed in London.
37:43The plane's captain requested political asylum in the United Kingdom.
37:49He claimed to have information about the cause of the crash of Egypt Air 990, and he feared reprisals in
37:55Egypt.
37:56Captain Hamdi Tahar was a colleague of Gamil El Batuti, and he was walking away from his wife, his family,
38:04and his country.
38:06The FBI sent a special agent, and along with a British security officer, he interviewed Captain Tahar.
38:12Were you aware of El Batuti displaying sexually inappropriate behavior?
38:20Yes. This is very important.
38:22I heard it from pilots who I trust.
38:28Batuti got into trouble for sexual misbehavior in New York, with maids, and following women and so on.
38:37The airline tolerated this for a while, and they told him several times, maybe you can get away with this
38:44normally.
38:45But this is America. You represent our country. You cannot do these things.
38:52Captain Tahar's information was second-hand, but his description of El Batuti meeting with the airline's chief pilot was intriguing.
39:00Khatim Rushdie went to see Batuti the night they took flight 990. They had a meeting in a hotel.
39:09He told him that what he had done could not be covered up, and something had to be done.
39:17The flight back to Cairo from New York would be his last flight.
39:22Camille, we go back many years together.
39:26But this would be your last flight to the United States.
39:31He would not be flying to America anymore.
39:35Batuti had just had these big privileges taken away from him, and he was humiliated.
39:43So, I think that what happened was this.
39:48He must have said to himself, if this is going to be my last flight, it will be Khatim Rushdie's
39:56last flight also.
40:00The FBI provides Tahar's interviews to the NTSB.
40:04Egyptian officials ask for another Egypt air pilot to be interviewed.
40:09Mohammed Badrawi had known El Batuti for 40 years.
40:13Interviewed at the NTSB, he described discussing with Captain Rushdie what to do about El Batuti's behaviour.
40:21Do you know if Khatim Rushdie was aware of this situation with Batuti?
40:26Well, of course he knew.
40:28But he pretended not to know, I think, because Khatim Rushdie is the chief pilot.
40:32Badrawi confirms that Khatim Rushdie is upset about El Batuti's harassment of women at the hotel.
40:39So Badrawi takes Rushdie's concerns to his old friend.
40:42And if he didn't listen to you, what did you tell him was going to happen?
40:45Nothing much really. You see, he was on his way out.
40:49We don't normally touch people when they're approaching 60.
40:52I know, I know. I'm not saying that you are doing something wrong.
40:56They are saying that you're doing something wrong.
40:58Well, I know you are my friend.
41:01We have a little patience, and then they're out.
41:05Badrawi would ask Rushdie to be patient with his old friend,
41:08considering that El Batuti only had three months to go before retirement.
41:14We have been in the Air Force for 40 years.
41:18All he needs is a few more months.
41:22Badrawi's interview confirmed that Rushdie did believe El Batuti's behaviour had to be dealt with.
41:27And he denied Tahar's claim of a meeting between the two on the night of the crash.
41:32But Captain Tahar was not done.
41:34He had another compelling story to add.
41:42In London, an Egyptian pilot has requested political asylum and is offering an insider's view of the most controversial tragedy
41:50in the history of Egypt Air.
41:54Captain Tahar revealed to the FBI how Egypt Air briefed its pilots about the crash.
42:00When they had done the transcripts of the cockpit voice recorder,
42:04the Egypt Air Chief of Operations called all flight crew to a special meeting in Cairo and told us the
42:11facts.
42:13Just the facts.
42:14No commentary.
42:17No explanation of any technical problem.
42:22He did not say anything.
42:24But all we pilots realized that this was not an accident.
42:30And then he told us not to talk to anyone about it.
42:34Don't talk to your family.
42:35Don't talk on the phone.
42:37Don't talk to each other, he told us.
42:39All of us realized that Batuti had done this on purpose.
42:49For the American families involved, this was a case of 216 murders and one suicide.
42:56In Egypt, big, close extended families combined with a strong religious faith to deny that Egyptians commit suicide.
43:07The story has many sides.
43:09It has to do with religion, it has to do with beliefs, it has to do with culture.
43:18I think until today, still in the Egyptian culture, people don't believe that Muslims or that Egyptians or that people
43:29coming from that culture commit suicide.
43:34Cultural differences were not the only impediments to this investigation.
43:38One of the difficulties that we did have was that when we went over to Egypt and attempted to really
43:44get into his background, it became a very sensitive issue for the Egyptian government.
43:48FBI efforts to learn about El Batuti's personal life and family relations would be stymied.
43:54It became almost to the point where we were never really able to develop all the things that we needed
44:01to get at.
44:03Finally, on March the 21st, 2002, after a nearly $10 million investigation over two years and five months, the NTSB
44:13publishes its report and determines that...
44:16The probable cause of the Egypt Air Flight 990 accident is the airplane's departure from normal cruise flight and subsequent
44:25impact with the Atlantic Ocean as a result of the relief first officer's flight control inputs.
44:31The Egyptian Civil Aviation Authority responded angrily and their response read in part...
44:37It is obvious that the NTSB has not done the type of professional accident investigation expected by the Egyptian government.
44:47The NTSB's former director of aviation safety takes exception to the Egyptian view.
44:53What was unprofessional was the insistence by the Egyptians in the face of irrefutable evidence to anyone who knows anything
45:06about investigating airplane accidents and who knows anything about aerodynamics and airplanes...
45:13...was the fact that this airplane was intentionally flown into the ocean.
45:20No scenario that the Egyptians came up with or that we came up with in which there were some sort
45:29of mechanical failure in the elevator control system would either match the flight profile or was a situation in which
45:39the airplane was not recoverable.
45:41Like many of his countrymen, the loyal nephew cannot believe his uncle Gamil was a mass murderer.
45:49This is a simple plane crash. It was put and made like this for no reason. It shows that it's
46:01a cover up.
46:04Greg Phillips takes pride in having thoroughly investigated every lead and every scenario.
46:10When we sign on to be accident investigators, we do it with the idea that we're going to keep the
46:14next one from happening, not to cover up one that did because of whatever reason may be given to us.
46:21I've never known that to happen. I've never even known it to come close to happening.
46:27There continue to be differing perspectives on the crash of Egypt Air Flight 990 and unanswered questions remain for broken
46:34and damaged families.
46:36For many of them, answers to how and why this plane crashed will forever be a painful mystery.
46:43The End
46:44The End
46:44The End
46:50The End
46:55The End
46:56The End
46:56The End
46:59The End
47:00Video