Free Republic

In his first public comments on the crash of EgyptAir Flight 990, the director of the F.B.I., Louis J. Freeh, said today that the Egyptian authorities were cooperating with the inquiry into the cause of the crash and would investigate a list of leads at the request of American law-enforcement officials. Mr. Freeh, speaking with reporters at the headquarters of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, said the authorities in Cairo were assisting American investigators even though Egyptian officials have dismissed the principal American theory that a reserve pilot might have deliberately brought down the airliner. In a separate development, aviation...

On Halloween 10 years ago today, EgyptAir Flight 990 nose-dived into the ocean off Nantucket from 33,000 feet, leaving the families of 217 children, grandparents and lovers forever haunted by the question: Why? “You just wish you knew what the reason was. Some things break your heart so much,” said Bobbie Bergman of Colorado. Bergman’s sister Paula Barnes, a one-time Marblehead resident, perished with their parents William and Tamsin Barnes and several family friends about 1:52 a.m. on Oct. 31, 1999, a half hour into what was to be a 10-hour passage from New York to Cairo.

WASHINGTON, March 15 — A former EgyptAir pilot told American investigators two years ago that the co-pilot of EgyptAir 990 crashed the plane into the Atlantic Ocean to take revenge on a company executive who had just demoted him and was riding as a passenger, a person involved in the investigation said today. American aviation investigators say they do not know whether the explanation given by the pilot, which was first reported today in The Los Angeles Times, is true. Since the crash of the Boeing 767, Egyptian officials have argued that there was no evidence that the co-pilot, Gamil...

On October 31st 1999 EgyptAir Flight 990 struck the ocean with the loss of all on board. The end of the NTSB's final summary reads thusly "The National Transportation Safety Board determines that the probable cause of the EgyptAir 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. The reason for the relief first officer's actions was not determined."