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Al-Ahram Weekly 4 - 10 November 1999 Issue No. 454 
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Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 |
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Al-Ahram Weekly 4 - 10 November 1999 Issue No. 454
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| Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 |
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Unravelling the tragedy
3.15, Sunday, Cairo airport: A man awaits one of the passengers on EgyptAir flight 990, unaware of the disaster that claimed the lives of all on board (photo: Thomas Hartwell)
Egypt Region International Economy Opinion Culture Features Profile Travel Living Sports People Time Out Chronicles Cartoons Letters With salvage efforts suspended yesterday due to stormy seas, investigators focused on a malfunctioning thrust reverser as the possible cause of the crash.
A crew member of the Boeing 767 which crashed into the Atlantic on Sunday, killing all 217 people on board, had warned of a problem with one of the plane's thrust reversers, investigators said. The crew member raised the issue before the plane took off from Los Angeles on Saturday, National Transportation and Safety Board Chief Jim Hall told a news conference.
Hall said that federal regulations allow airplanes to fly with one thrust reverser not working because the equipment is considered optional. Thrust reversers help slow a plane for landing.
The airliner en route for Cairo plunged into the sea some 30 minutes after taking off from New York's John F Kennedy Airport on Sunday. The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), which oversees US air travel, said on Tuesday it would issue a warning on thrust reversers on Boeing 767s. The FAA was concerned about the danger of accidental deployment of the devices during flight, with possibly fatal consequences.
On 767s, large cones of metal move in front of the jet's exhaust, forcing the engine into reverse, rather than providing forward momentum. A Lauda Air Boeing 767, which came off the production line in 1989 just after the doomed Egyptian airliner, crashed in Thailand in 1991 when the thrust reverser on one of its two engines accidentally deployed.
According to a law enforcement agent on Monday, the FBI was checking a report that one of the plane's crew members had complained to the management of the hotel where the crew stayed that his briefcase had been tampered with. Agents took a bomb-sniffing dog to the room where the crew member stayed and the dog reacted to a bag of sugar near a coffee-maker. The sugar and some loose wires found in the room were sent to FBI labs in Washington for analysis. But investigators are cautious about attaching significance to this lead.
The weekly magazine Al-Mussawar went as far as to raise the possibility that an American missile was fired at the plane by accident after it flew near a military base off the shores of New York City. But a preliminary check of the parts of the wreckage that were retrieved showed no signs of burns.
Searchers will know more about what caused the crash when they retrieve the two black boxes -- the flight data and cockpit voice recorders -- which could yield invaluable information on what happened immediately before and during the plane nose-dived into the sea. The Mohawk, a navy vessel, and the Whiting, a National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration vessel, working in tandem, have located radio signals thought to come from the boxes. However, bad weather, which is expected to linger in the area for up to two days, forced both ships back to port.
Another US navy ship, the salvage vessel Grapple, equipped with a team of navy divers and remotely-operated underwater search facilities, will be responsible for the next phase of the operation, locating and lifting the black boxes and wreckage from the ocean floor.
The Grapple, which was used in the search for TWA flight 800 in 1996, will need 36 to 48 hours for preparations before it leaves port.
So far, rescuers have recovered just one body from the site of the plane crash, near Nantucket island, northeast of New York City. On Monday, coast guard crews combing the area also found "a significant piece" of the twin-engine aircraft, large enough to require lifting by crane.
The storm added another dimension to the challenge facing a rescue operation in waters 75 metres deep.
As the search at sea continued, relatives of the crash victims, including 73 people who had flown in from Cairo, arrived in Rhode Island where the crash team was centered.
The doomed plane carried 106 US nationals, 62 Egyptians, 22 Canadians, three Syrians, two Sudanese and one Chilean, according to EgyptAir.
The Egyptians included 33 officers of the armed forces, who were returning home after finishing training courses in the US, a Defence Ministry statement said. The statement said most of them were "junior ranks". The ministry is sending a military team to the US to help with the investigation and assist with the formalities necessary for the return of deceased military personnel.
In accordance with standard regulations, Egypt has asked the US to take charge of the investigation. But Egyptian investigators do not want to stand there, doing very little or virtually nothing. "More co-operation between the two sides would prove very useful," said one source.
The first Egyptian plane carrying families of victims arrived in New York on Tuesday. The passengers included 55 people who lost loved ones in the crash and several high-ranking EgyptAir officials, led by Chairman Mohamed Fahim Rayyan. Also on board was a delegation that will help US authorities investigate the accident.
Devastated by his brother's death, Said Hussein, an Egyptian resident of the United States, said he had only two hopes left -- to bury his brother and understand how he had died.
Since Monday, Hussein has waited at a Rhode Island hotel which has been converted into a welcome centre for families of victims from the flight. But as families gathered from around the United States, Canada and Egypt, the rough seas on Tuesday had driven search ships back to port by nightfall.
"We don't know anything yet," said Hussein, 37, who has lived in the US for 12 years and who runs a garage in California. "We have to accept the fact. We don't have any choice."
Several relatives of victims succumbed to severe trauma on Tuesday when US officials warned them there would probably be no complete bodies recovered from the plane crash and an ambulance was rushed to the scene to treat several people who had collapsed.
A representative of the families, George Arian, said US National Transportation and Safety Board officials told "the families that what they were going to see now was just only human remains. There's no such thing as a body there. And we wanted them to know, so nobody here would think there would be a whole body or something like that."
Coverage above and inside by Thomas Gorguissian in New York, Amira Howeidy, Dina Ezzat, Khaled Dawoud, Rehab Saad and Amira Ibrahim in Cairo, and wire services
Also see Egypt and Editorial
