Air Emergency (2003–…): Season 3, Episode 8 - Death and Denial - full transcript

A Boeing 767 cruises high above the Atlantic Ocean

on its way to Egypt.

217 people are on board

Just half an hour after take off, disaster strikes

The pilot and copilot struggle
desperately for control of their aircraft

The lives of all on board
will depend on these 2 pilots

and what they do
as their plane dives towards the ocean.

Just after 1:00 AM on October, 31st 1999,

the 217 people on board
Egypt Air Flight 990

are waiting for take off.

The flight's command Captain is Ahmed El-Habashi.



He has been with Egypt Air for 36 years.

The command First Officer
is 36-years-old Abdel Anwar.

He switched duty with another copilot,

so he can return home in time for his wedding.

"He will be a married man!"

"Congratulations, Abdel!"

The airline's chief pilot for the Boeing 767,
Captain Hatem Rushdy,

joins them in the cockpit.

At 1:20 AM, First Officer Abdel Anwar...

...is going through his take-off clearance
with Air Traffic Control.

"Following gateway, clear for take off runway 22R,

"Egypt Air Flight 990 Heavy.

In the name of God, the merciful, the compassionate
cabin crew, take off position

After an every day religious phrase,
the copilot helps with the take off



For safety, both pilots push the throttles.

On a flight of 10 hours,
it is standard practice at Egypt Air

to provide a relief crew
to share the flying duties.

The command crew takes off and lands

The relief crew flies the middle portion.

Tonight, Captain Raouf Noureldin and
First Officer Gameel Al-Batouti,

are the relief crew.

They will take over after
the first 3 or 4 hours

and fly the plane until shortly before Cairo.

A large number of passengers are senior citizens
from the United States...

...looking forward to touring
the wonders of ancient Egypt.

My dad and Jenny were married in 1998,
on October, 23th

and to celebrate their first anniversary,
they decided to take a trip to Egypt

Anne their child's parents are retired
and on their way to Egypt as well.

They always had a great time
on these tours they traveled frequently

So, it was a pleasure trip
they were looking forward to.

seeing the Holy Land, especially.

Maureen Sacratini and her
brother John Simermeyer

enjoyed the fact
that their parents loved to travel.

They have been particularly fond of a program
known as "Elderhostel"

This particular vacation-trip to visit the
pyramids and the other historical sites in Egypt

was an elder-hostel -trip.

There are 14 of Egypt Air's most experienced crew
operating the flight.

There are also
33 Egyptian military officers and pilots on board,

returning after training
with the American Armed Forces.

Gameel Al-Batouti used to be
an Egyptian Air Force flight instructor.

He is now one of the oldest First Officers
at Egypt Air.

He is so much older than the other copilots,
that out of respect,

they call him "Captain".

Just over 20 minutes after take-off,
Al-Batouti enters the cockpit.

Hello, Gameel, how are you?

What's new?

I slept, I swear

Just wait,
Let me tell you something

I am not going to sleep at all.

I might come and sit 2 or 4 hours

I slept, I slept.

Do you mean you are not going to get up?

You will get up,
go and take some rest and come back.

You should have told me this,
you should have told me this, "Captain" Gameel

You should have said:"Abdel..."

"Did I see even you?

I will work first,
just leave me a message

The younger First Officer seems unhappy...

...that Al-Batouti wants to replace him
so early on the flight.

I am not sleepy,

So, you take your time sleeping
and whenever you wake up

you come back, Captain, Okay?

I will come either way,
come and work the last few hours and that's all.

It's not like that
That's not the point,

Look, if you want to sit here,
there is no problem.

I will come back to you,

I will go and get something
to eat and come back alright?

Look here,
why don't they bring your diner to you here

and then I'll go asleep OKAY

That is good

OKAY, with your permission Captain?

And with that, Al-Batouti gets his way.

Do you see how he does whatever he pleases?

Do you know why that is?

Captain El-Habashi sends his
First Officer's resentment

and tries to smooth
over the situation

Active First Officer Anwar wonders if
Al-Batouti wants to take over

because he may not want to work
with the relief Captain Raouf Noureldin

"Doesn't he want to work with Raouf or what?"

It's possible, it's possible, God knows,

But look, you shouldn't get upset, right?

By his prophet,
he is too stocky nonsense

Everything is under control

OKAY, chief

Active First Officer Anwar conceives
and hands over to Relief F.O. Al Batouti.

Normally, this is the
most relaxed, easy part

of a long flight for pilots
and passengers alike.

The highly automated aircraft-systems
will take care of the flying for several hours.

Excuse me,
I must go to the toilet

Go ahead, please

Before it is grounded,
Well they are still eating

I'll be back to you

Before the Captain returns, disaster will strike..

...Egypt Air Flight 990.

The fate of everybody on board
will be in the hands of the copilot...

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

On a Boeing 767 bound for Cairo,
Egypt’s Air Flight 990,

appears to cruising smoothly over the Atlantic.

The relief F.O. Gameel Al Batouti
is alone in the cockpit,

while the captain has gone to the washroom

But suddenly, the plane dips, plunging down.

The nose pitches forward,
creating zero G,

weightlessness
throughout the aircraft

Former NTSB investigator Greg Phillips
became an expert in the events of this flight

This airplane started at 1 G,
which is what we expect for level cruise flight

As you push the nose down as if you top of
the hill in a car at high speed that drives away

you'd feel the airplane fall away from you
and you would start to feel a little lightness

and as the dive progresses
you would still a little bit lighter yet

Whatever the First Officer is facing,
he has to do it alone.

Captain Ahmed El-Habashi faces the disorientation
at zero gravity

desperately trying to return to the cockpit.

Warning signals indicate that the dive is
exceeding the maximum speed allowed for the plane

taking it 99 % at the speed of sound

This far passes the plane's design limits

The stresses on the airframe are pulling apart

Captain Ahmed El-Habashi pulls back hard
on his control column.

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

by pushing forward on the throttles

But he gets nothing.

Desperate, the captain deploys the speed-brakes,
panels, standing up from the wings

in effort to slow the dive

It works, the plane slows down

As the nose comes up, in just seconds

they go from 0 G to double the force of gravity

Captain Ahmed El-Habashi struggles
to level the plane

The 767's dive continues to slow

Then suddenly, the engines stop
and the power goes off.

plunging the aircraft into darkness

Here, the CVR and the FDR stop.

No one knows what happens
in the plane during the next 2 minutes...

...but Radar tracks its path.

The plane is climbing again...

...up from nearly from 4000 m to over 7500 meter

Then, the aircraft falls
into another terrifying dive

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

How long can passengers survive
in the frigid waters of the North Atlantic?

Could anyone life through the crash
of Egypt Air 990?

In the middle of a cold October-night,
a fully loaded Boeing 767 bound for Egypt,

has crashed into the Atlantic,

nearly 100 km's from
the American coast

217 lives are at stake.

The U.S. Merchant Marine training-vessel
"Kings Pointer" is first to arrive.

"Just as the day was dawning,
we noticed the oil in the water"

That was the first indication,
so we turned the ship around back into the oil

as soon as we turned around,
we started to see debris rising up at the surface

In Heliopolis, a Cairo-suburb,

Captain Ahmed El-Habashi daughter
can only guess what her father went through.

Can 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 ft suddenly,

trying to save his life, his colleagues lives

the people, the passengers.

In a home in central Maryland,
a sleepy Sunday-morning takes a tragic turn.

I had woken up for some reason at 5:30 AM
and we were flipping on a TV to check the weather

deciding what mass we are going to do on a Sunday

Immediately, on CNN they had a Flight 990 missing
and I was in total shock

I ran down to my refrigerator where
I have my parents' itinerary

I ripped it off and just started sobbing
uncontrolled, screaming, I didn't know what to do

We located a significant
debris-field

and that we have concentrated
our search-effort since then

on about a 36 mile² of area,
about 50 miles South of Nantucket

At the end of October, the waters of
the North Atlantic are so cold,

that normally life expectancy
is about 5 to 6 hours

In Cairo, relief Captain Raouf
Noureldin's daughter May

come to hope for her father

I thought maybe if the plane crashed,
he would be able to be in a safe place

and to swim and go to land.

At the crash-site, all that is left is pieces

Within hours,
authorities know that there will be no survivors

We believe in this point
that it is in everyone's best interest

to no longer expect
that we will find survivors in this case.

Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak
reaches out to a stricken nation

This is the worst air-crash in Egypt's history

I was shocked
It is a big tragedy for us.

I give my condolences to all the passengers
through the families

the families, the crews,
who have been lost in this tragedy.

I have contacted with president Clinton and others

He is giving good support
for trying to find

and investigate to see what was the reason.

The American President would answer his ally
with a commitment.

I spoke earlier
with President Mubarak of Egypt today...

..to express my condolences
and to assure him

that we would be working together closely
until this matter is resolved.

We do not know what causes this tragedy.

In Northern Indiana, music
historian Jim Brokaw learned

what happened to his father and stepmother.

One 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.

Shocked and grieving,
relatives arrive at Newport, Rhode Island

They will seek answers and share comfort.

There were 100 Americans,
89 Egyptians, 21 Canadians

and 7 victims of other nationalities on board.

All want to know what caused the tragedy.

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

In Washington, Greg Grundig from the NTSB
leads the investigation in to this crash

From the very beginning, we realized
it was a very difficult case.

The airplane was in cruise,
night time, all over the ocean,

and when it went into the ocean, there
was just a little-bit of floating debris

but we have to recover the airplane
from the bottom of the ocean

to begin the investigation.

The job of finding the black boxes
would be difficult

The water is about 70 meter deep

and the tremendous force of the crash
has smashed the locator beacons off the boxes.

In this case, both the underwater locators

what you call "Pingers" ,
which helps us locate the boxes underwater,

were detached.

So, we had an extra difficult job
in trying to find the actual boxes

9 days after the crash,

the U.S. NAVY's unmanned
submarine "Deep Drone"

recovers the first
of the 2 Black boxes

The FDR which stores information
about what the aircraft and its systems were doing.

4 days later, the second black box,

the CVR, lands on the deck

It is carefully transported
to the NTSB laboratories.

The CVR captures all
sounds in the cockpit

for the last 30 minutes of the flight.

The black boxes are protected
to withstand impact

of 1400 times the force of gravity.

The recovery of the CVR provided a
gripping and bewildering picture

of the last minutes of the disaster.

Here, investigators hope,
is the key to unlock the mystery of Flight 990

Translating the Arabic, spoken in the cockpit
is a top priority at NTSB headquarters.

The cockpit Voice recorder was of good quality,
it was easily usable,

translatable by the investigation team.

The CVR is always
just a piece of the investigation

amidst the other
pieces of the puzzle.

It goes along with the FDR-data,

the examination of the wreckage
and all the other aspects of the investigation

On major investigations like the crash
of Egypt Air Flight 990

the NTSB works routinely with the FBI

The physical evidence has to be managed

in case it is needed in court.

Former FBI assistent-director Lew Schiliro
is a veteran-investigator

and no stranger to air-crashes.

By the time that Egypt Air occurred,

we were fairly adept at
looking at airline-disasters

particularly with the view
of developing whether or not

a terror incident or criminal act had occurred.

The FBI checked for evidence
of bombs, terrorists,

or terrorist targets on the flight.

Trying to determine luggage
against the passenger-list

whether or not there was anything unusual
in the manifest

Whether or not the people that loaded the plane

could recall anything that would
have caused them concerns

we review the tapes to indicate whether or not
anything unusual was loaded on that plane

We had no evidence at all
of any explosive devices on board Egypt Air,

that night.

At the NTSB, American investigators find no fault
in the airplane from studying the FDR.

But Egypt members of the investigation-team
insisted that not all the evidence was in.

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

They hope the cause of the crash can be found here.

Egypt investigators search for
any possible mechanical reason for the crash.

While they search, other theories are pursued.

What happened in the cockpit?...

...divides the investigation
and fuels an international controversy.

October, 1999,
Egypt Air Flight 990 crashes in the Atlantic Ocean,

killing everyone on board.

The investigation focuses on
both the airplane and the pilots

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

One of the key questions:

Why was Gameel Al Batouti in the
cockpit, hours earlier than expected

who supposed to replace Abdel Amwar
much later in the flight?

But in Cairo, Abdel Amwar's
older brother Tarek,

has no problem with Abdel
being replaced in the cockpit

When the actions in the cockpit are put together
with the voice recorder

a time-line emerges that indicates
a series of initially bewildering decisions.

The time-line reveals that after
Captain Ahmed El Habashi leaves the cockpit

there are some softly spoken words
who's meaning can only be guessed at.

And then,
Gameel Al Batouti disconnects the autopilot.

Released from the autopilot's control,
the plane starts to descend

rolling to the left.

Egypt’s experts describe Al Batouti's
decision to shut off the autopilot

as a possible reaction to an unusual
movement of the aircraft,

prompting him to take manual control.

However,
the leader of the NTSB investigation disagrees.

We found no reason for the autopilot to be
disconnected by fault or failure of the airplane

Normally, all aircraft movements are
meant to keep passengers comfortable

as though they were on the ground.

After switching off the autopilot,
the FDR indicates

that Al Batouti pushes his control column forward

lowering the elevator panels.

Then, he pulls the throttles back,
reducing engine power.

This causes the plane to dive.

Egypt investigators say
Al Batouti was not trying to crash the plane.

and there may have been an elevator-failure
which he cannot overcome

Strangely, there is no mention of a problem
on the cockpit-tape

When the Captain made his way back to the cockpit,
he asked the First Officer what was going on

He never received a response.

As former director
of aviation-safety,

Bernard Loeb oversaw all air-crash
investigations at the NTSB.

It is well understood that in a cockpit
virtually any airline in the world

When a Captain comes in and asks a question

the First Officer will respond.

When the Captain asks the questions,
Al Batouti did NOT respond

Fighting the dive,
pulling his column back all the way,

the Captain cannot regain
control of the elevator,

so he tries the throttles
to power out of the dive

"Who shut off the engines?"

He was unaware that
seconds earlier,

the First Officer had shut off
the fuel to the engines.

Egypt experts say that Al Batouti
may have been acting out of caution.

The flight data show
that a low oil-pressure warning appeared

That can mean the engines have flamed out.

The Captain may have then
ordered the fuel to the engines shut off

as part of a procedure for restarting them.

The NTSB considered this possible scenario as well.

The engines shut off on a 2-engine airplane
at night over the water,

We couldn't understand any reason why.

Any emergency could cause you
to shut all the power off,

available to the airplane when you are
heading away from the nearest airport.

For most among the Egyptian
investigator scenario's

was a tragic elevator failure.

In Washington, at the NTSB,

analysis of the FDR indicates that Captain
El Habashi was pulling back on his column

to make the plane climb,

while First Officer Al Batouti appears
to be pushing forward on his column,

making the plane go down.

Egypt’s experts argue 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.

They stated that First Officer Al Batouti
was working to regain control of the elevators

and that he and Captain El Habashi
were working together.

If there had been an elevator-failure,

it could explain the First Officer's
unusual performance in the cockpit.

Supporting evidence is found

when analyzing fragments of the
wreckage in the hangar at Rhode Island.

Here, investigators made a remarkable discovery:

3 unusually sheared rivets.

These tiny parts play an important role
in the Boeing 767's elevator assembly

Egypt's consulting experts determine that the
scratches in the middle surfaces of these rivets

show that they were sheared off
in two different directions

One direction could be attributed to the crash,

the second could indicate
that the break occurred before the crash.

It could indicate a jam in the elevator.

Egypt's experts drew this
to the attention of the FAA,

America's civil aviation regulator

Alarmed by the potential risk,

the FAA ordered all rivets to be inspected
on every Boeing 767 in operation

around the world.

The inspections uncovered
136 sheared rivets

and 34 aircraft were grounded
until the fault was fixed.

The FAA said the problem could resolve
in loss of control-ability of the airplane.

Egypt's investigators have uncovered
a credible sounding scenario...

...that the sheared rivets in the
elevator assembly of the Boeing 767

indicate an elevator-hardover
that the pilots could not overcome,

but according to Greg Phillips,

this idea ignores the very
design of the elevators.

Those were by design for the Boeing 767,
the controls cannot be split

They are designed that way in case one of
the surfaces the control surfaces fails

So that whoever is still in control of the plane
(or can control the airplane)

with a failed elevator.

Before he became an investigative writer,
William Langewiesche was a commercial airline pilot.

Flight 990's maneuvers are
programmed into a flight simulator

in order for Langewiesche to test
the pilot's reactions

To 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.

Whatever the cause of the dive,
Langewiesche tries a variety of responses

to recover from it.

Finally they asked me to wait
at the extreme 15 seconds,

to sit in an 767 or any airplane

going out of control and do nothing for 15 seconds.

15 seconds is a long time
It is inconceivable,

but I did it

And even in 15 seconds,
even waiting 15 seconds...

...I was able through no particular skill,
reacting as any student pilot would...

...to recover the airplane,
recover from the dive...

before the airplane exceeded its limits.

No Boeing 767 has suffered from
an elevator hard over and dive

before or since the crash.

Based 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 a time

we could not make this airplane do what it did
with any of the failure-scenarios

that were presented to us.

While mechanical failure-scenarios were exhausted

and terrorism was excluded,

The FBI continue to dig into the life
of First Officer Gameel El Batouti

Less than 3 weeks
after the disaster,

news media report that in the
final moments before the crash,

Al Batouti said: "I have made my decision,

I put my faith in God"

causing many to believe
he might be an Islamic militant:

bend on destruction.

But that translation was incorrect.

From our initial review of Batouti's background

He was a fairly religious person

but I don't think we had anything to determine
that his religious believes were radical...

...or beyond what.

He would have been a normal religious person

What had Batouti said?
What did it mean?

Egyptian professor Amin Bonnah teaches Arabic
at Georgetown University in Washington.

This means "I depend",
"I rely"

"I trust"

a la = "on"

And Allah is God

People use it when they start driving,
going back

It is a very positive phrase

So it is not the kind of phrase
that anyone would be using

before they commit a crime,

or before they commit suicide.

To say this common phrase once was normal...

...but Al Batouti repeated it eleven times

I expect that Captain Batouti would say:

"There is a fire in the engine,

something stopped,
I can see something is hitting the plane"

anything like that.

But he goes on endlessly saying:
"I trust in God"

"This is not logic"

For the Al Batouti family,

their grief would be compounded by the
need to defend their father's honor.

When he died, the ONE thing we had to reassure is

was that he had died honorably,

and now they are trying to take that away from us.

NTSB chairman Jim Hall allow
that it may have been a criminal act.

The investigation could end up
in the hands of the FBI alone

There is only proven for the NTSB
to consult with these experts and officials

to fully evaluate this information,
prior to any fault decision

on whether the responsibility
for this investigation should transfer to the FBI.

Egypt's president Hosni Mubarak
formerly commander of the Egyptian Air force,

had known Gameel Al Batouti
according to his nephew Walid

Mubarak ask President
Bill Clinton to intercede

to keep the crash from becoming an FBI matter

Since the crash,
Walid Al Batouti has become family spokesman.

You 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 said according my experience

"It is in the tail-unit, something happened there.

It is NOT suicide.

It could be either a mechanical failure,
a manufacturer thing...

...something"

In America, the FBI focuses on Gameel Al Batouti
and the question of motive

The FBI would learn
about the man in control of Egypt Air 990

Interviewing colleagues and friends,
discovering another side to Gameel Al Batouti.

Investigating the cause of
the crash of Egypt Air 990

the spotlight falls on the character and
history of relief First Officer Gameel

He was 59 years old, approaching 60

He had never reached
above the rank of First Officer

that may have caused him some...
...animosity towards Egypt Air

He had some personal issues in his own life,
in terms of financial

Some issues in terms of
his family members being sick

needing medical attention.

At first, the doctors have already on that particular flight ,
have already told him...

...that your daughter is going
positive with the medication

and everything is going fine.

And he was extremely happy,
he was so excited to come back

Gameel Al Batouti was bringing his daughter's
medical records back with him that night

amongst other things.

OKAY, he bought tires for his son

and an argument went on on the
phone between him and his son

My father called me to come to the airport,
because he could not carry all 4 tires himself.

He says:" Listen, I carry your
tires all the way from the States

You don't want to come and
carry from the airport?

It is a very natural thing.
A man is going to commit suicide

Why would he do this?

In New York,
the FBI continued their investigation

at the Hotel Pennsylvania...

...where Egypt Air had a blocked booking
of about 40 rooms for their crews.

The investigation of the FBI was able to do
as far as Batouti's background

probably spent 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
various places that he stayed

So, he did have a I think a engaging
behaviour with some of the hotel people

in terms of sexual misconduct.

Hey, pretty lady, where did you get to?

which at that time really appeared to
be totally out of the rule of what was normal

for a person of that status to do.

A husband and a father of five,

Gameel Al Batouti was notorious for leering at
and bothering female guests and hotel staff.

"Come to my room"

The FBI learned that 2 years before the crash,

two young women reported that he
called them on their hotelroom-phone...

...telling them to look out the window
across the court-yard.

"Have a good time, too"

When they did,
they saw Al Batouti exposing himself

and reported the incident to Hotel-security.

His provocative behaviour would continue.

A hotel maid told the FBI that Al Batouti
had sexual harassed her more than once.

"Hey, good girl, "listen, stop,
let me tell you something.

No, I want to talk to you, because, look,
I give you $100 if you just come to my room.

"Just leave me alone"

"Don't be like that, come on"

When the maid reported the approach,
the hotel added it to its list

of Al Batouti's sexual
harassment of guests and staff.

The allegations of the hotel, as far as they said,
it happened way before,

not one day before the flight,
as is been mentioned

But according to the FBI,
the incident took place on October 29th, 1999

the day before the flight.

3 Months after the FBI began
investigating Al Batouti,

an Egypt flight landed in London.

The plane's captain requested political asylum
in the UK

He claimed to have information
about the cause of the crash of Egypt Air 990

and feared reprisals in Egypt

Captain Hamdi Taha was a colleague of Gameel Al Batouti

and he was walking away from his wife, his family,
and his country

The FBI sent a special agent
and along with a British Security Officer,

he interviewed Captain Taha.

Were you aware of Al Batouti
displaying sexually inappropriate behaviour ?

Yes !

This is very important,

I heard it from pilots who I trust.

Batouti got into trouble for sexual misbehavior,

in New York...

...with maids and following women and so on.

The airline tolerated this for a while

and they told him several times:

"Maybe you can get away with this normally,

but this is America.

You represent our country

You cannot do these things !"

Captain Hamdi Taha's information was second hand,

but his description of Al Batouti
meeting with the airline's chief pilot

was intriguing.

Hatem Rushdie went to see Batouti
the night they took Flight 990.

They had a meeting in the hotel

He told him, that, what he had done,

could not be covered up.

and something had to be done:

The flight back to Cairo (from New York)

would be his last flight.

Rushdy:
"Gameel, we go back many years together,

but this will be your last flight to the U.S."

He would not be flying to America anymore.

Batouti had just had these BIG privileges,

taken away from him

and he was humiliated.

So, I think, that happened, was this:

He must have said to himself:

"If this is going to be my last flight,

It will be Hatem Rushdie’s last flight also !"

The FBI provides Hamdi Taha's interviews
to the NTSB.

Egyptian officials ask
for another Egypt Air pilot to be interviewed.

Mohamed Betrawi had known Al Batouti for 40 years.

Interviewed at the NTSB,

he described discussing with Captain Rushdie
what to do about Al Batouti's behaviour

Do you know if Hatem Rushdi was aware
of this situation with Batouti ?

Well of course he knew,

but he pretended not to know
because Hatem Rushdie is the chief pilot

Betrawi confirms that Rushdie is upset about
Al Batouti's harassment of women at the hotel.

So,
Betrawi takes Rushdie’s concerns to his old friend

We don't normally touch people
whether approaching 60

Betrawi would have plead with Rushdie
to be patient with his old friend,

considering that Al Batouti had only
3 months to go before retirement.

"We have been in the Air Force for 40 years

All you need is a few more months.

Betrawi's interview confirm
that Rushdie was considering

disciplinary actions against Al Batouti.

Here was apparent support for Hamdi Taha's account

and Captain Hamdi Taha was not done,

He had another compelling story to tell...

In London, an Egyptian pilot
has requested political asylum

in his offering insider's view of the most
controversial tragedy in the history of Egypt Air.

Captain Hamdi Taha
revealed to the FBI

how Egypt Air briefed its pilots about the crash.

When they have done the transcripts of the CVR,

the Egypt Air chief of operations called
all flight crew to a special meeting in Cairo.

They told us the facts.

Just the facts.

No commentary.

No explanation of any technical problem.

He did not say anything
but all the pilots realized...

...that this was NOT an accident

Then, he told us not to talk to anyone about it

"Don't talk to your family,
don't talk on the phone,

Don't talk to each other"
he told us.

All of us realized that Batouti...

...had done this on purpose.

For many of the families involved,
this was a case of 216 murders and 1 suicide

In Egypt, big, close, extended families
are often protective of their own.

And a strong religious faith

influences many to think
Egyptians do not commit suicide.

The story has many sides,

It has to do with religion,

It has to do with believes

It has to do with the culture

I think that today, The Egyptian culture
people don't believe that Muslims

or that Egyptians, or that
people coming from that culture,

commit suicide.

Cultural differences were not
the only impediments to this investigation

One of the difficulties that we did have,
was that when we went over to Egypt

in attempt to really get in his background,
it became a very sensitive issue

for the Egyptian government.

FBI efforts to learn about Al Batouti's personal life
and family relations would be stained

It became almost to the point

where we were never really able to develop
all the things that we needed to get at

Finally, on March 21st 2002,

after a nearly $10,000,000 investigation
over 2 years and 5 months,

the NTSB publishes its report and determines that.

The 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.

The Egyptian Civil Aviation Authority
responded anguerly

and their response read in part

It is obvious that the NTSB has not done the
type of professional accident investigation

expected by the Egyptian Government.

The NTSB's former director of Aviation Safety
takes exception to the Egyptian view.

"What was unprofessional ?,

Was the insistence by the Egyptians
in the phase of irrefutable evidence

to anyone who knows anything
about investigating airplane accidents

and who knows anything
about aerodynamics in airplanes

was the fact that this airplane
was intentionally flown into the ocean.

Like many of his countrymen the loyal
nephew cannot believe that his uncle Gameel

was a mass murderer.

This is a simple plane-crash.

It was put and made like this...

...for no reason.

It shows that it is a cover up.

Greg Phillips takes pride in having thoroughly
investigated every lead and every scenario

We signed on the
accident investigators,

We do with the idea that we are going
to keep the next thing from happening

Not to cover up
the one that did,

because whatever reason made me given to us

I have never known that to happen

I have never even know to come close to happening

Their continuing to be differing perspectives
on the crash of Egypt Air Flight 990

an unanswered question remain
for broken and damaged families

for many of them,
answers to how and why this plane crashed

will forever be a painful mystery.

Voice over: Stephen Bogaert

Subtitles:
Rein Croonen