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Notes for rewrite of EgyptAir Flight 990

Contents 1 1:39 - Dispute in the cockpit 2 1:48:30 - Al-Batouti's cockpit actions 3 1:50 - The captain returns 4 Crash 5 Egyptian disagreement 6 Transcript

[edit] 1:39 - Dispute in the cockpit

Nineteen minutes into the flight, Al-Batouti is heard entering the cockpit, and is addressed by Captain El Habashy, the pilot of the departure crew, as "Jimmy". With the appearance of the relief FO on the flight deck, departure First Officer Anwar immediately starts protesting that he had slept prior to the flight, and Al-Batouti responds that Anwar should go and rest, and that he'll work until then. Despite Anwar's protest, Captain El Habashy takes Al-Batouti's side in the dispute, and FO Anwar relinquishes his seat to Al-Batouti, but remains in the cockput until 1:47.^[1] Captain El Habashy then excuses himself, saying he was going to visit the lavatory, "before it gets crowded",^[1] leaving Al-Batouti alone in the cockpit, with the aircraft flying on autopilot.

The aircraft, like all airliners, was equipped with a Mode C transponder, which automatically reported the plane's altitude when queried by the ATC radar. At 1:44, the Mode C indicated that Flight 990 had leveled off at FL330. Three minutes later, the controller requested that Flight 990 switch communications radio frequencies for better reception. A pilot on Flight 990 acknowledged on the new frequency. This was the last transmission received from Flight 990.

[edit] 1:48:30 - Al-Batouti's cockpit actions

Eleven seconds after the cockpit microphones record the sound of the cockpit door closing, one of the mics picks up an utterance that is not immediately recognizable. According to the NTSB transcript, "The five Arabic speaking members of the group concur that they do not recognie this as an Arabic word, words or phrase. The entire group agrees that three syllables are heard and the accent is on the second syllable. Four Arabic speaking group members believe that they heard words similar to 'control it'. One English speaking member believes that he heard a word similar to 'hydraulic'. The five other members belive that the word(s)were unintelliglble."^[1]

Following this, over the next 95 seconds, Al-Batouti's hot microphone records him repeating the phrase "Tawakalt ala Allah", or "I rely on God" nine times.^[1]

Boeing 777 Captain Mohammed El Bradrawi, who had been a long-time friend of Al-Batouti, was one of a number of senior EgyptAir pilots were interviewed during the NTSB investigation. The report states that "He [El Bradrawi] did not think that any of the other flight officers prayed during flight. He stated, that Roushdy or ElBatouty would not pray while flying." ^[2] Other EgyptAir pilots interviewed in the investigation concurred that Al-Batouti was not known to pray while flying.^[3] There was much speculation in Western media at the time that this implied that he was mentally unstable and believed God had told him o crash the plane or would help him to do so, but in reality various Egyptians have testified that it was an unusual thing to say as it was considered a positive thing that one might say before undertaking some important task, such as an exam, rather than something someone suicidal might say prior to crashing a plane as Al-Batouti is believed to have done.^[4]

At 1:49:45, the FDR records the autopilot being disengaged. At this point, the aircraft was level at 33,000 feet on a heading of 080° (magnetic). Seven seconds later, the throttles were retarded, and two seconds later, the elevators were moved to the nose-pitch-down position. The aircraft responded, changing in attitude from a cruise attitude of 3° nose up to just over 40° nose down in 15 seconds. The FDR records the G-force going rapidly from normal 1G to a minimum negative 0.2G, and remaining below 0G for 8 seconds, indicating a rapid pitch-over.^[5]

[edit] 1:50 - The captain returns

It is unclear at what point the captain returned to the cockpit, but at 1:50:08, in the middle of the period of 0g conditions,^[5] he asks, "What's happening, what's happening?" Rather than answer, Al-Batouti repeats "I rely on God" twice more, despite the captains continuing attempt to ask what was happening.^[1]

At 1:50:17, an ATC radar hit shows that the plane had dropped to 25,400 feet, a loss of almost 8,000 feet in about 30 second.^[6] Three seconds later, the FDR records the engine start levers being moved from "engine run" to "cutoff".^[5] Another three seconds later, the captain then asks, "What is this, did you shut the engines?" and "Get away from the engines".

The last radar return that ATC received was at 1:50:29, showing an altitude of 18,300 feet.^[6] The captain then begins to pull back on the control yoke, to pull the aircraft out of the dive, repeating "Pull with me" three times. It's at this point, at 1:50:38, that the CVR recording ends.^[1]

[edit] Crash

As the plane dove, its speed increased to almost the speed of sound, at which point the CVR records the sound of the captain returning to the cockpit and asking, "What's happening?". Moments later, he said, "Pull with me", at which point the elevators show movement to a split-elevator condition.^[7]

[edit] Egyptian disagreement

The ECAA issued their own final report on the accident, which differs in key areas from the NTSB's report. The introduction states, "Although the Egyptian investigators were, to one degree or another, involved in aspects of the investigation and were assigned to the various NTSB working groups, their input was often ignored and their questions were often left unanswered," and "The detailed reports of various aspects of the investigation of this accident were prepared by the NTSB with the assistance of the Egyptian investigators and set forth certain information in connection with Flight 990 as to which there is no disagreement. In the view of Egyptian investigators, however, other reports and analyses are incomplete because they are based upon either erroneous or misleading data. In these areas, which are discussed in this report, Egyptian investigators have attempted to address gaps in the investigation using the information available from the NTSB and from the Boeing Company, the manufacturer of the airplane."^[8]

• The NTSB concluded that the cockpit actions recorded on the FDR could have been all performed by one pilot. While the Egyptians acknowledged this, they asked that the phrase "but the flight profile recorded by the FDR could not be followed with only one pilot performing these tasks." be added to the factual report.^[9]
• The Egyptian representative to the investigation expressed concern that the radar return data was incomplete, and that there were three high-speed radar returns in the vicinity of 990 that hadn't been explained.^[10]
  • ECAA raised concern regarding what appeared to be at least one high-speed radar target, traveling east-to-west, which crossed 990's flight path shortly before the aircraft began its dive. The 84th RADES determined that these were not real targets, but false returns in the radar data, termed "strobing", resulting in one radar facility's beams interferring with those from another facility's. The ECAA expressed concern that this strobing phenomenon should not have been present at the location of the 990 accident site.^[11] (review completed thru pg 31)
• Osama El-Baz, an advisor to Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak expressed his anger at the naive assumption that it was suicide [by El-Batouti that caused the crash of flight 990] because it was an attempt to remove all responsibility from the company [Boeing] and others".^[12]

[edit] Transcript

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