All language subtitles for Mayday.S03E08.Death.and.Denial.1080p.AMZN.WEB-DL.DD+2.0.H.264-playWEB_track3_[eng]

A Boeing 767 cruises
high above the Atlantic Ocean
on its way to Egypt.

Two-hundred-and-seventeen people
are onboard.

Just half an hour
after takeoff,
disaster strikes.

The pilot and co-pilot
struggle desperately
for control of their aircraft.

The lives of all onboard
will depend on these two pilots

and what they do about this dive
towards the ocean.

- 3,000?
- We're not getting any oxygen!

- We have the terrain alarm.
- Aero Peru 3...

We are in an emergency.

The John F. Kennedy
International Airport
outside New York City

is one of the busiest airports
in the world.

In 1999,
nearly 32-million passengers
fly in and out.

More than 340,000 flights
take off and land.

EgyptAir Flight 990 is destined

to be one
of the most controversial
ever to leave this airport.

- Whoa!
- The fate of this flight

challenges the strength
of an international friendship
between two allies,

and uncovers
a hidden mechanical flaw

in one of the world's
most popular airliners.

The FBI will become involved.

We reviewed surveillance tapes

to indicate whether or not
anything unusual was loaded
on that the plane.

Investigators in two countries
develop two different theories.

Was this a tragic accident,
or a terrible crime?

Just after 1 a.m.
on October 31, 1999,

the 217 people onboard
EgyptAir Flight 990
are waiting for takeoff.

The flight's command captain
is Captain Ahmed el-Habashi.

He has been with EgyptAir
for 36 years.

Yes.

The Command First Officer
is 36-year-old Adel Anwar.

He switched duty with another
co-pilot so he could return
home in time for his wedding.

- Soon be a married man.
- Congratulations, Adel.
- Thank you very much.

The airline's Chief Pilot
for the Boeing 767,

Captain Hatem Rushdy,
joins them in the cockpit.

At 1:20 in the morning,

First Officer Adel Anwar
is going through
his takeoff clearance

with Air Traffic Control.

...fly the Gateway climb,
climbing to 5,000.

Following Gateway,
clear for takeoff,
runway 22 right.

EgyptAir 990 heavy.

- Cabin crew advised?
- In the name of God,
the merciful, the compassionate.

Cabin crew takeoff position.

After an everyday blessing,
the co-pilot assists
the takeoff.

For safety,
both pilots push the throttles.

On a flight of 10 hours,
it's standard practice
at EgyptAir

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
Gamil el-Batouty

are the relief crew.

They will take over after
the first three or four hours

and fly the plane
until shortly before Cairo.

V1. Rotate.

Positive rate of climb
both sides. One thousand.

EgyptAir 990,
heavy contact, departure now,
125.7.

1257. Bye.

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

looking forward to touring
the wonders of ancient Egypt.

My dad and Jinny were married
in 1998,

on October 23,

and to celebrate
their first anniversary,

they decided to take a trip
to Egypt.

Anita Child's parents
are retired and on their way
to Egypt, as well.

They always had a great time
on these tours.

They travelled frequently,

and 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 had been particularly
fond of a program
known as Elderhostel,

and this particular
vacation trip, uh,

to visit the pyramids
and the other, uh,

uh, historical,
uh, sites in Egypt
was an Elderhostel trip.

There are 14 of EgyptAir's
experienced crew operating
the flight.

There are also 33 Egyptian
military officers and pilots
onboard,

returning after training
with the American Armed Forces.

Gamil el-Batouty used to be
an Egyptian Air Force
flight instructor.

He's now one of the oldest
first officers at EgyptAir.

He's so much older
than the other co-pilots that,
out of respect,

they call him "Captain."

But some at EgyptAir think
that "Captain" el-Batouty
has been coasting too long

on the favours of old friends.

Just over 20 minutes
after takeoff,

el-Batouty is about to leave
his seat.

Former National Transportation
Safety Board investigator
Greg Phillips

became an expert
on the events of this flight.

The relief first officer
who would've been expected
to come to the cockpit

somewhere during the later part
of the flight,

uh, halfway or wherever
he was comfortable,

whatever the normal change
would've been,

came into the cockpit
about 20 minutes after takeoff.

Hello, Jimmy. How are you?

How are you, sir?
What's new?

- I, uh, I slept, I swear.
- Just wait.

Let me tell you something.
I'm not going to sleep at all.

I might come sit
for two hours and--

But I-I-I... I slept. I slept.

You mean you're not going
to get up?

You will get up.
Go and take some rest
and come back.

You should've told me this.
You should've told me this,
Captain Gamil.

You should've said, "Adel--

- Did I even see you?
- "I will work first."
Just leave me a message.

The younger first officer
seems surprised that el-Batouty

wants to replace him
so early in the flight.

...and I'm not sleepy,
so you take your time sleeping
and when you wake up,

whenever you wake up, come back,
Captain, okay?

- I'll come either way.
- Captain.

- Come 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's no problem.

I'll come back to you.
I'll go and get something to eat
and come back, alright?

Fine, fine. Look here.
Why don't you go...

Why don't they bring your dinner
to you here,
and then I'll go sleep, okay?

- That's good.
- Okay, with your permission,
Captain.

And with that,
el-Batouty leaves
to get his meal.

Do you see how he does
whatever he pleases?

Do you know why that is?

Captain el-Habashi senses
his first officer's resentment

and tries to smooth over
the situation.

- Are you a youngster?
- Anwar wonders if el-Batouty
wants to take over,

because he may not want to work
with Relief Captain Noureldin.

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

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

Look, you shouldn't get upset, right?

By the prophet,
he's just talking nonsense.

That's it.

- Everything's under control.
- Okay, chief.
- Thanks, Adel.

First Officer Anwar concedes
and is ready to hand over
to el-Batouty.

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.

It's very unusual
for an airplane flying
over the Atlantic at nighttime

to encounter any kind
of difficulties.

We normally expect accidents
to happen in approach or landing
or near airports,

and very seldom do we get
anything out over the ocean
in the middle of the night.

- Excuse me, Jimmy, while I take
a quick trip to the toilet.
- Go ahead, please

Before it gets crowded,
while they're still eating.
I'll be back to you.

Before the captain returns,

disaster will strike
EgyptAir Flight 990.

The fate of everyone onboard
will be in the hands
of the co-pilot,

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

On a Boeing 767
bound for Cairo,

EgyptAir's Flight 990
appears to be cruising smoothly
over the Atlantic.

The relief first officer,
Gamil el-Batouty,
is alone in the cockpit,

while the captain has gone
to the washroom.

But then the plane dips,
plunging down.

Whoa!

The nose pitches down,
creating zero-G,
weightlessness, throughout the
aircraft.

This airplane basically
started at one-G,

which is what we'd expect
for a level cruise flight.

As you push the nose down,

as if you would be cresting
the top of a hill in a car
at a high speed, it drops away,

you'd feel the airplane
fall away from you,

and you would start to feel
a little light in the seat;

and as the dive progressed,
you would feel
a bit lighter yet.

I rely on God.

Whatever the first officer
is intending,

he says nothing
except this phrase
again and again.

Adel!

Captain el-Habashi
fights the disorientation
of zero gravity,

desperately trying to return
to the cockpit.

An American journalist
living in France
studied this flight
extensively.

Sixteen seconds
after the dive began,

when the airplane had gone
into zero-G and into negative-G,

and was at an extreme angle,

the captain somehow made his way
back into the cockpit.

How he did that, physically,
I will never know.

Warning signals indicate
the dive is exceeding
the maximum speed allowed

for the plane,
taking them to 99%
of the speed of sound.

This far past
the plane's design limits,

the stresses on the airframe
are pulling it apart.

- What's happening?!
- I rely on God. I rely on God.

Captain 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.

- What?
You shut off the engines?!
- I rely on God.

Desperate, the captain deploys
the speed brakes,

panels standing up
from the wings,
in an effort to slow the dive.

The dive is slowing,
back from the brink
of the sound barrier.

The dive goes on,
but the nose is coming up.

In just seconds,
they go from zero-G
to double the force of gravity.

Captain el-Habashi struggles
to level the plane

and pulls back hard
on the control column.

The 767's dive begins to slow.

- Pull with me!
- I rely on God.

You shut off the engine!
Pull...!

In seconds the engines stop
and the power goes off,

plunging the aircraft
into darkness.

Here the cockpit voice recorder
and the flight-data recorder
stop.

No one knows
what happened in the plane
during the next two minutes.

- Pull!
- But radar tracks its path.

The plane is climbing again...

...up from about 5,000 metres
to over 7,500 metres,

as the aircraft structure
is weakened by the stresses of
abnormal speeds and manoeuvres.

- Pull!
- Then the aircraft falls
into another terrifying dive.

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

EgyptAir 990,
New York Center.

EgyptAir 990, if you copy...
At 1:52 a.m.,

Flight 990 disappears
from radar screens,

crashing into the surface
of the Atlantic Ocean,

some 100 kilometres
off the American coast.

Coast Guard Search and Rescue
get a call at 2:15 a.m.

A plane has disappeared,
and Coast Guard vessels
are called to the scene.

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

Just as the day was dawning,

we noticed oil in the water,
and that was the first
indication,

so we turned the ship around
back into the oil,

and as soon as we turned around,
we started seeing debris
rise up to the surface.

In Heliopolis,
a Cairo suburb,

Captain el-Habashi's 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 feets, suddenly,

trying to, uh...

...save his life,
his colleagues' lives,

the people, the passengers?

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

I had woken up for some reason
at 5:30 in the morning,

and we were flipping on the TV
to check the weather.

And we were deciding what Mass
we're gonna be going to.
It was Sunday. Um...

And, immediately, on CNN,

they had flight 990 missing,
and I... was in total shock.

I ran down to my refrigerator,
where I had
my parents' itinerary,

and I ripped it off and just...

started sobbing uncontrollably,
I was screaming,
I didn't know what to do.

We located
a significant debris field,

and we have concentrated
our search efforts since then

on about a 36 square mile
of area,

about 50 miles south
of Nantucket.

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

that normal life expectancy
is about five to six hours.

In Cairo, Relief Captain
Raouf Noureldin's daughter,

Mai,
clung to hope for her father.

I was talking to myself,
trying to convince myself that
my father was not on this plane,

and if, uh, he's on this plane,

he will be safe, 'cause, uh,

my father was, um...
an Air Force pilot.

He had a very good experience.

And, uh, I thought
maybe if the plane crashed,

he would be able to, you know,
to be... to be in a safe place,

and to swim
and to go to any, uh... land.

At the crash site,
all that's left is pieces.

Within hours, authorities know
there's little hope
for survivors.

We believe at this point
that it is in...

everyone's best interests

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.

Really, I was shocked.
It's a big tragedy for us.

And I give my condolences,
all the passengers,
to the families,

to the families of the crews
who have been lost
in this tragedy.

And I've contact
with President Clinton
and other agencies,

and he's giving good support
for, uh...

trying to find, investigate,
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 assure him that we would
be working together closely
until this matter is resolved.

We do not know
what caused 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 seven victims
of other nationalities onboard.

They're all asking:
"What caused this tragedy?"

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

We are beginning what may be
a long investigation,

and we are prepared to do

what it takes
to find the answers

to the questions we are seeking.

In Washington, Greg Phillips,
from the National
Transportation Safety Board,

leads the investigation
into this crash.

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

The airplane was in cruise,
nighttime, out over the ocean.

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

but we had 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 metres deep,

and the tremendous force
of the crash

has smashed the locator beacons
off the boxes.

In this case,
both the underwater locators,

which are called pingers,

which help us locate the boxes
underwater, were detached.

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

where the recording material
was contained.

Nine days after the crash,
the U.S. Navy's unmanned
submarine, Deep Drone,

recovers the first
of the two black boxes:
the flight data recorder,

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

Four days later,
the second black box,
the cockpit voice recorder,

lands on the deck
and is carefully transported
to the NTSB laboratories.

The cockpit voice recorder
captures all sounds
in the cockpit

for the last 30 minutes
of the flight.

The black boxes are protected
to withstand impacts

of 3,400 times
the force of gravity.

The recovery
of the cockpit voice recorder

provided a gripping
and bewildering picture of
the last minutes of a 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 good quality,

uh, it was easily useable
and translatable
by the investigation team.

The cockpit voice recorder
is always just a piece
of the investigation

that fits many other pieces
of the puzzle.

It goes along with
the flight-data-recorder data,

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

On major investigations
like the crash of EgyptAir 990,

the NTSB works routinely
with the FBI.

The physical evidence
has to be managed
in case it's needed in court.

Former FBI Assistant Director
Lew Schiliro
is a veteran investigator

and no stranger to air crashes.

By the time EgyptAir occurred,

we were fairly adept at looking
at airline disasters,

particularly with the view
of developing whether or not
a terrorist incident

or a criminal act had occurred.

The FBI checked
for evidence of bombs,

terrorists or terrorist targets
on the flight.

Trying to determine luggage,
uh, against the passenger list,

and whether or not
there was anything unusual
in the manifest,

whether or not the people
that loaded the plane
could recall anything

that would've caused
them concern.

We reviewed surveillance tapes
to indicate

whether or not anything unusual
was loaded on that plane.

We had no evidence at all
of any explosive device
onboard EgyptAir that night.

At the NTSB,
American investigators
found no fault in the aircraft

from studying
the flight-data recorder.

But Egypt's 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's representatives search
for any possible mechanical
cause for the crash.

While they search,
other theories are pursued.

A study into the causes
of airline crashes,
published in January 2001,

points to pilot error
as the cause of one-third
of these accidents.

It also finds a strong
connection between bad weather
and pilot error.

But the crash of EgyptAir 990
occurred in clear weather
with veteran pilots.

- Pull with me!
- What happened in the cockpit
would divide the investigation

and fuel an international
controversy.

I rely on God. I rely...

October 1999,
EgyptAir Flight 990 crashes
into the Atlantic Ocean,

killing all 217 people onboard.

The investigation develops
in two directions:

fault in the airplane
and pilot action.

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

One of the key questions:

Why was the relief first officer
in the cockpit hours earlier
than expected?

He was supposed
to replace Adel Anwar
much later in the flight.

But in Cairo,
Adel Anwar's older brother,
Tarek,

has no problem with Adel
being replaced in the cockpit.

Suppose I am
with one of my friends
and we are travelling in a car

and he asks me if he can drive
instead of me.

Is this going to be a problem?
For example,

if Adel didn't get enough sleep
and Captain Gamil told him,

"Let me fly the plane
instead of you and you go
rest," there is no problem with
that.

When the actions
in the cockpit are put together
with the voices recorded,

a timeline emerges that
indicates a series of initially
bewildering decisions.

I'll be back to you.

The timeline reveals
that after Captain el-Habashi
leaves the cockpit,

there's a series of sounds whose
meaning can only be guessed at.

Control it.

And then the relief
first officer disconnects
the autopilot.

I rely on God.

Released from the autopilot's control,

the plane starts to descend,
rolling to the left.

Egypt's experts described
el-Batouty'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
in the airplane.

Normally all aircraft
movements are meant
to keep passengers comfortable

as though they were
on the ground.

After switching off
the autopilot,

el-Batouty pushes
his control column forward,
lowering the elevator panels,

so the flight-data recorder
indicates to the NTSB.

Then he pulls
the throttles back,

reducing engine power.

This causes the plane to dive.

Egypt's investigators say
el-Batouty was not trying
to crash the plane,

and there may have been
an elevator failure
which he could not overcome.

Strangely there is no discussion
of a problem
on the cockpit tape.

- I rely on God.
- When the Captain made his way
back to the cockpit,

he asked the first officer
what was going on
and 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... in a cockpit,

a transport cockpit
of virtually any airline
in the world,

when a captain comes in
and asks a question,
the first officer will respond.

When the captain asked
his questions,

Batouty did not respond.

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

the captain cannot gain complete
control of the elevator,

so he tries the throttles
to power out of the dive.

What?
You shut off the engines?!

He was unaware
that seconds earlier,

the first officer had shut off
the fuel to the engines.

Egypt's experts say
that el-Batouty 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 the procedure
for restarting the engines.

- Shut the engines!
- It's shut!

The NTSB consider
this possible scenario, as
well.

The engines shut off
on a two-engine airplane,

at night, over the water.

We couldn't understand
any reason why any emergency

could cause you to shut
all of the power off available
to the airplane

when you're heading away
from the nearest airport.

Foremost among the Egyptian
investigators' scenarios
was a tragic elevator failure.

In Washington, at the National
Transportation Safety Board,

analysis of the flight-data
recorder indicates

that Captain el-Habashi
was pulling back on his column
to make the plane climb,

while First Officer el-Batouty
appears to be pushing forward
on his column,

making the plane go down.

Elevators work simply.

Pull back on the column
and the elevators go up,
lifting the plane.

Push forward and
the elevator panels move down
to make the plane descend.

They work together,
but in this case,

they're going
in opposite directions.

Egypt's experts argued that
this crash could've been caused

by a failure
in the elevator assembly,
producing an elevator hardover,

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 el-Batouty
was working to regain control

of the elevators,

and added
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.

Pull!

Supporting evidence is found
when analyzing fragments
of the wreckage

in the hangar at Rhode Island.

Here investigators made
a remarkable discovery:

three unusually sheared rivets.

These tiny parts play
an important role

in the Boeing 767
elevator assembly.

Egypt's consulting experts
determined that the scratches

in the metal surfaces
of these rivets showed
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,

and so may have indicated a jam
in the elevators.

Egypt's experts drew this
to the attention of the Federal
Aviation Administration,

America's civil aviation
regulator.

Alarmed by the potential risks,

the FAA ordered
all bellcrank 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 result

in loss of controllability
of the airplane.

Egypt's investigators
had uncovered
a credible-sounding scenario:

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

indicated a jam
that could've caused
an elevator hardover

that the pilots
could not overcome.

NTSB investigator Greg Phillips
disagreed.

Those are by design
for the Boeing 767.

The controls can be split.
They're designed that way,

in case one of the surfaces,
the control surfaces, fails,

so that whoever is still
in control of the airplane,

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 manoeuvres
are programmed
into a flight simulator

in order for Langewiesche
to test a 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 a 767 or any airplane
going out of control

and do nothing for 15 seconds.

Fifteen seconds is a long time.

Uh, it's inconceivable.

But I did it.

And even at 15 seconds,

even waiting 15 seconds,

I was able,
through no particular skill,

really reacting almost
as any student pilot would,

to recover the airplane,
recover from the dive,

uh, before the airplane exceeded
its limits.

No Boeing 767 has suffered
from an elevator hardover
and dive

before or since the crash.

The aviation experts
hired by Egypt developed
a wide range of scenarios,

citing a fault
in the elevator assembly as
a possible cause of 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 the 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 continued to dig
into the life of First Officer
Gamil el-Batouty.

Less than three weeks
after the disaster,

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

el-Batouty said,
"I have made my decision.

I put my faith in God,"

causing many to believe
he might be an Islamic militant
bent on destruction.

But the translation
was incorrect.

From our initial review
of Batouty's background,

he was a fairly religious
person.

But I don't think
we had anything to determine

that his religious beliefs
were radical or beyond what,

uh, would've been
a normal religious person.

What had Batouty said?
And what does it mean?

Tawakkaltu Alallah.

Egyptian professor
Amin Bonnah teaches Arabic

at Georgetown University
in Washington.

Tawakkaltu means "I depend."

"I rely, I trust."

And "ala" is "on,"

and "Allah" is "God."

"Tawakkaltu Alallah,"

"On God I rely."

I depend in whatever
I'm going to be embarking on.

People use it
when they start a trip,

when they start driving,
going back home,

we say,
"Tawakkaltu Alallah."

When you have an exam,

you begin by saying
"Tawakkaltu Alallah."

It's a very positive phrase.

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

before they commit a crime,

or before they commit suicide.

Tawakkaltu Alallah.

To say this common
phrase once was normal,

but el-Batouty repeated it
11 times.

Alallah.

- What's happening?!
- Tawakkaltu Alallah!

I expect that...
Captain Batouty would say,

uh... "There is a fire
in the engines,

uh, the...

something stopped, uh,

I can see something's hitting
the plane,"

anything like that.

But he go on endlessly
saying Tawakkaltu Alallah.
This is not logic.

For the el-Batouty family,

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

When he died,

the one thing we had
to reassure us

was that he had died honourably.

And now they're trying
to take that away from us.

There is a lot
of mechanical failures.

Why you have... only to say
that it's a deliberate act,

a deliberate act,
no mechanical, no weather,
no mechanical, no weather.

So why?
'Cause he's an Egyptian pilot.

Chairman Jim Hall allowed that
it could've been a criminal act
rather than an accident.

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

It is only prudent
for the National Transportation
Safety Board

to consult with these experts
and officials,

to fully evaluate
this information,

prior to any final decision

on whether the responsibility
for this investigation

should transfer to the Federal
Bureau of Investigation.

Egypt's president,
Hosni Mubarak,

formerly commander
of the Egyptian Air Force,

had known Gamil el-Batouty,
according to his nephew Walib.

Mubarak asked
President Bill Clinton
to intercede

to keep the crash
from becoming an FBI matter.

Since the crash,
Walid el-Batouty,
nephew of Gamil,

has become
the el-Batouty 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 says,
"According to my experience,

it's in the tail unit;
something happened there.

It's not suicide.
It could be either a...
mechanical failure,

a... a manufacturing fail,
something."

In America, the FBI focuses
on Gamil el-Batouty
and the question of motive.

The FBI would learn
about the man
in control of EgyptAir 990,

interviewing colleagues
and friends,

discovering a dark side
to Gamil el-Batouty.

Investigating the cause
of the crash of EgyptAir 990,

the spotlight falls
on the character and history

of Relief First Officer
Gamil el-Batouty.

He was 59 years old,
approaching 60,

had never risen above the rank
of first officer.

That may have caused him
some animosity towards EgyptAir.

Had some personal issues
in his own life,

in terms of financial, uh...

some issues in terms
of his family members being, uh,

uh, sick,
needing medical attention.

They've used the daughter
in the accusation. As they said,
she was sick and, uh,

and that's why maybe
he committed suicide.

Uh, can I...
before we go to this,
I will give you the reason.

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.

Gamil el-Batouty was bringing
her medical records back
that night,

among 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 four tires himself.

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

You don't want to come
and carry it from the airport?"
It's a very natural thing.

A man is gonna commit suicide,
why would he do this?

In New York, the FBI continued
their investigation
at the Hotel Pennsylvania,

where EgyptAir had a block
booking of about 50 rooms
for their crews.

The investigation
that the FBI was able to do,
as far as Batouty's background,

probably spanned 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 the various places he stayed.

So he did have, I think,
a propensity to engage in...

behaviour with some
of the hotel people,
in terms of sexual misconduct.

Hey, pretty lady,
where did you get to?

Which, you know, at the time,
really appeared to be
totally out of the realm

of what was normal for a person
of that status to do.

A husband and father of five,

Gamil el-Batouty was notorious
for leering at and bothering
female guests and hotel staff.

The FBI learned that two years
before the crash,

two young women reported
that he called them
on their hotel-room phone,

telling them to look out
the window across the
courtyard.

- You have a good time too.
- When they did,

they saw el-Batouty
exposing himself

and reported the incident
to hotel security.

His provocative behaviour
would continue.

A hotel maid told the FBI
that the night before the crash
of EgyptAir 990,

el-Batouty had
sexually harassed her again.

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

- I'm not here for that.
- Oh, sure.

- I'm here to work!
Just leave me alone!
- Don't be like that.

When the maid reported
the approach,

another addition was made
to the hotel's record

of sexual harassment of guests
and staff by el-Batouty.

The allegation of the hotel,
as far as they said,

it happened way before,
not one day before the flight,

not one day before the flight
as has been mentioned.

The hotel maid told the FBI
the incident took place
on the October 29, 1999,

the day before the flight.

Three months after the FBI began
investigating el-Batouty,

an EgyptAir flight landed
in London.

The plane's captain requested
political asylum
in the United Kingdom.

He claimed to have information
about the cause of the crash
of EgyptAir 990,

and he feared reprisals
in Egypt.

Captain Hamdi Taha
was a colleague
of Gamil el-Batouty.

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 el-Batouty
displaying...

...sexually inappropriate
behaviour?

Yes. This is very important.

I heard it from pilots
who I trust.

Batouty got into trouble
for sexual misbehaviour
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 Taha's information
was secondhand,

but his description
of el-Batouty meeting
with the airline's chief pilot

was intriguing.

Hatem Rushdy
went to see Batouty

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.

Gamil, we go back
many years together...

...but this will be your last
flight to the United States.

He would not be flying
to America anymore.

Batouty... had just had...

these big privileges
taken away from him.

And he was humiliated.

So...

I think that what happened
was this.

He must have said to himself:

"If this is going to be
my last flight,

it will be Hatem Rushdy's
last flight also!"

Certainly,
within various corporations

where people bring weapons
into the office in an attempt
to take revenge

against people that they feel
have aggrieved them,

perhaps Batouty felt
that EgyptAir had been the cause
of some of his issues.

And, unfortunately,
in this case,

it was the kind of office
that was flying at 33,000 feet.

The FBI provides
Taha's interviews to the NTSB.

Egyptian officials
ask for another EgyptAir pilot
to be interviewed.

Mohamed Badrawy had known
el-Batouty for 40 years.

Interviewed at the NTSB,

he described discussing
with Captain Rushdy what to do
about el-Batouty's behaviour.

Do you know if Hatem Rushdy
was aware of this...
this situation with Batouty?

Well, of course, he knew.

But he pretended not to know,
I think, because Hatem Rushdy
is the chief pilot.

Badrawy confirms
that Hatem Rushdy is upset

about el-Batouty's harassment
of women at the hotel.

So Badrawy takes Rushdy's
concerns to his old friend.

And if he didn't listen
to you, what did you tell him
was going to happen?

Nothing much, really.
You see, he was on his way out.

We normally don't touch people
when they're approaching 60.

I know! I know.
I'm not saying
you are doing something wrong.

They are saying
you're doing something wrong.

I know you are my friend.

We have a little patience
and... then they're out.

Badrawy would ask Rushdy
to be patient
with his old friend,

considering that el-Batouty
only had three months to go
before retirement.

We have been in the Air Force
for 40 years.

And all he needs is...
a few more months.

Badrawy's interview confirmed
that Rushdy did believe

el-Batouty's behaviour
had to be dealt with.

And he denied Taha's claim
of a meeting between the two
on the night of the crash.

But Captain Taha was not done.

He had another compelling story
to add.

In London,
an Egyptian pilot has requested
political asylum,

and is offering
an insider's view

of the most controversial
tragedy in the history
of EgyptAir.

Captain Taha revealed to the FBI
how EgyptAir briefed its pilots
about the crash.

When they had done
the transcripts
of the cockpit voice recorder,

the EgyptAir chief of operations
called all flight crew

to a special meeting in Cairo
and told us the facts.

Just the facts.

No commentary,

no explanation
of any technical problem.

He did not say anything,

but all we pilots realized
that this was not an accident.

And 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 Batouty...

had done this on purpose.

For the American families
involved,

this was a case of 216 murders
and one suicide.

In Egypt, big, close,
extended families combine
with a strong religious faith

to deny that Egyptians
commit suicide.

The story has many sides.
It has to do with...

with religion,

it has to do with, uh, beliefs,
it has to do with the culture.

I think, until today,
still in the Egyptian culture,

uh, people don't believe...

that Muslims,

or that Egyptians,

or that people coming
from that culture,

uh, 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
and attempted to really get into
his background, uh,

it became a very sensitive issue
for the Egyptian government.

FBI efforts to learn
about el-Batouty's personal
life and family relations

would be stymied.

It became, uh,

almost to the point
where we were never really able

to develop all the things
that we needed to get at.

Finally, on March 21, 2002,

after a nearly $10 million
investigation

over two years and five months,

the NTSB publishes its report
and determines that:

The Egyptian Civil Aviation
Authority responded angrily
and their response read in
part:

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 face
of irrefutable evidence

to anyone who knows anything
about investigating, um,
airplane accidents,

and who knows anything about
aerodynamics and airplanes,

was the fact that this airplane

was intentionally flown
into the ocean.

No scenario that the Egyptians
came up with,

or that we came up with, um,

in which there were some sort
of mechanical failure
in the elevator control system

would either match
the flight profile,

or was a situation
in which the airplane
was not recoverable.

Like many of his countrymen,

the loyal nephew cannot believe
his uncle Gamil
was a mass murderer.

This is a simple plane crash.

It was put and made like this
for... for no reason.

It shows that it's a cover-up.

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

When we sign on
to be accident investigators,

we do it with the idea
that we're gonna keep
the next one from happening,

not to cover up one that did

because of whatever reason
may be given to us.

I've never known that to happen,

I've never even known it
to come close to happening.

There continue to be differing
perspectives on the crash
of EgyptAir Flight 990,

and unanswered questions remain
for broken and damaged
families.

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

will forever be
a painful mystery.

difuze