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Al-Ahram Weekly 11 - 17 November 1999 Issue No. 455 
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Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 |
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Al-Ahram Weekly 11 - 17 November 1999 Issue No. 455
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| Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 |
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Egypt Region International Economy Opinion Culture Features Profile Travel Books Sports People Time Out Chronicles Cartoons Letters The evidence mounts
By Thomas Gorguissian
Nine days after the crash of EgyptAir flight 990, the jet's flight data recorder has been recovered. Forty minutes after being located on Tuesday morning the recorder was recovered by Deep Drone, a search robot, and brought aboard the USS Grapple. The US Navy flew the flight recorder to Andrews Air Force Base in Washington, and from there it was taken to the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) headquarters.
It was reported later that the process of extracting data from the recorder had started and hopes are rising of soon finding the voice cockpit recorder.
Why the Boeing 767 plunged into the waters off Nantucket is still a mystery. Clues are few and speculations many. Investigators are optimistic, though, that the records contained in the blackboxes will reveal just how and why the EgyptAir plane plunged into the ocean, killing all 217 on board.
Bad weather, high seas and murky waters had hampered attempts to recover the boxes, lying on the ocean floor, some 270 feet below the surface of the water, apparently amid wreckage from the plane. With the terrain too dangerous for divers, an advanced robot, the Magnum, was lowered into the sea on Monday.
NTSB Chairman James Hall, in an attempt to assuage growing public impatience, stressed that it had taken a week to recover the recorders of TWA flight 800 in waters half as deep as those in the EgyptAir case. Hall reaffirmed the determination of the investigative team to solve the mystery. "We are committed to finding an answer," he said. "We will find that cause."
If it is in good condition the flight data recorder will be invaluable in determining what happened, David Hughes, managing editor of Aviation Week and Space Technology, told Al-Ahram Weekly. The box records at least 55 channels of information that "could profile a sudden, divergent path of the airplane", allowing investigators to "recreate the aircraft's performance in its final moments".
Officials continue to stress, though, that investigators are examining every possibility, including mechanical failure, human error and sabotage.
A relative of one of the passengers bids a last farewell following the inter-faith memorial service on Rhode Island (photo: Reuters)
On Monday, a man describing himself as a Cuban refugee was arrested in Boston in connection with a series of bomb threats received by Northwest Airlines since mid-October. But his claim that the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) was responsible for the EgyptAir crash was discounted by FBI officials. On the same day, FBI Director Louis Freeh told a news conference in Bangkok, Thailand, that there were as yet no indications that the crash was the result of a criminal act.
US Secretary of Defence William Cohen was asked if there was any information to support speculations that 33 Egyptian military officers who were on board might have been targeted somehow. "We don't have any information that would support that at this time," he responded. "The investigation is still very much in the preliminary stages, but we don't have any information that would indicate that. All we can do at the moment is carry out the investigation and the inquiry, and not prejudge it."
The lessons learned following the TWA 800 disaster have shaped both the mechanism of the ongoing investigation and the approach adopted by the media, who by and large have resisted the temptation to jump to conclusions. In hearings following the TWA 800 investigation, Senator Charles Grassley criticised the FBI and described its investigation as "a model of failure". This time the NTSB -- an independent government agency employing 400 people and with a budget of $57 million -- and not the FBI is in charge of the investigation.
On Monday, NTSB Chairman Hall took pains to answer suggestions that have appeared in the foreign press that the US authorities were somehow ambivalent to resolve the reasons behind the plane crash. "It is important for people to know there were more American citizens on the flight than from any other country... I want to say clearly for the record... we are committed to finding out what happened."
And with the recovery of one reorder, and hopes growing that the second will soon be found, that so far elusive goal may now be in sight.
Also see:
- Impatient for the truth by Amira Howeidy
