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Revenge drove pilot to crash plane, killing 217

Duncan Campbell in Los Angeles

Friday 15 March 2002 20.18 EST

The co-pilot of EgyptAir Flight 990, which crashed off New England in 1999, killing 217 people, deliberately crashed the plane as an act of revenge, according to a source close to the investigation.

Gamil el-Batouty had earlier been reprimanded for sexual misconduct and the executive who told him he would not be allowed to fly US routes again was on board the plane.

The report by the National Transportation Safety Board is due to be published shortly. It will conclude that el-Batouty forced the New York-to-Cairo plane down. The report will not attribute motives to him as to why he took the action nor will it suggest that he deliberately crashed the flight.

However, sources close to the investigation paint a picture of el-Batouty as a man facing ruin in the light of a series of allegations of sexual misconduct, including exposing himself to teenage girls, propositioning hotel maids and stalking female hotel guests.

On board the doomed flight was Hatem Rushdy, the chief of EgyptAir’s Boeing 767 pilot group, who had just reprimanded el-Batouty. He told him that as a result of his sexual activities he would not fly transatlantic routes - which carry extra pay - again.

“Rushdy told him ‘this is your last flight’ and el-Batouty’s attitude was ‘this is the last flight for you too’,” the former EgyptAir captain Hanofy Taha Mahmoud Hamdy told the Los Angeles Times.

A high-ranking member of the US team agreed. He said: “It was more revenge against Rushdy than just a suicide.”