Seconds to Disaster: US Edition Read Online Free

flight to Casablanca from Agadir, the young captain, Younes
Khyati, thirty-two, decided not just to end his own life, but those of his
forty-eight passengers. An experienced pilot with 4,500 flying hours, Khyati
was physically fit and had undergone a rigorous annual medical examination a
month previous.
    He showed no outward signs of
mental illness, or psychological troubles.
    But ten minutes after
take-off, Khyati inexplicably switched off the autopilot at 15,000 feet and
nosed the aircraft straight down. The female co-pilot radioed Casablanca. “Mayday,
Mayday, the pilot is—.” The message ended abruptly as the pilot plunged the
airliner into the Atlas Mountains, killing everyone on board.
    Motives have never been found
to explain what crash investigators called Captain Khyati’s “incomprehensible
gesture.”
    Some suicide-by-pilot cases
are even more bizarre. And none more bizarre than Egypt Air Flight 990.
    The exact reason for the crash
is still disputed by US and Egyptian authorities, who offered conflicting factors.
Both US and Egyptian authorities conducted a joint investigation. Yet all the
available facts point to an undeniable, chilling scenario that unfolded on
board the scheduled Los Angeles-New York-Cairo flight on October 31, 1999.
    At approximately 1:50 a.m.
EST. Egypt Air Flight 990—a Boeing 767 named Tuthmosis III after a pharaoh from
the 8 th Dynasty—plunged into the Atlantic, sixty miles south of
Nantucket Island, Massachusetts, in International waters. All 217 passengers on
board were killed.
    A rigorous investigation by US
investigators concluded that the aircraft was crashed deliberately, in a case
of pilot-suicide. One of the flight crew, First Officer Gameel Al-Batouti took
charge of the flight controls when the captain excused himself to go to the
bathroom, a conversation which was recorded by the cockpit voice recorder.
Thirty seconds later the voice recorder registered First Officer Al-Batouti,
who was then alone in the cockpit, say, “I rely on God.”
    A minute later the autopilot
was disengaged, followed by Al-Batouti again saying: “I rely on God.”
    Three seconds later, both
engine throttles were reduced to zero and the elevators were moved 3 degrees,
nosing the aircraft down. Six more times First-Officer Al-Batouti repeated “I
rely on God” before the captain burst into the cockpit, demanding, “What’s
happening?” [9]
    The flight data recorders
suggest that the captain may have grasped the controls and commanded the nose
up, while Al-Batouti commanded a nose down, at the same time that the engines
were shut down.
    The captain was heard demanding
in a panicked voice: “What is this? Did you shut the engines?”
    After an apparent struggle to
take control of the aircraft, the left engine was torn from the wing by the
extreme stress of the aircraft’s maneuvers. Less than a minute later Flight 990
plummeted into the icy Atlantic, killing everyone on board. 
    In the aftermath of Flight
990’s crash, in what could only be described as a further bizarre twist,
Egyptian investigators concluded that their aircraft crashed solely as a result
of mechanical failure. They chose to ignore all the pointed evidence from the
cockpit voice recorder and the aircraft’s flight data recorders—contained in
the black boxes—data which indisputably pointed to suicide-by-pilot.
    The US NTSB investigation,
however, was published on March 21, 2002, after an eighteen month
investigation, and this is their conclusion:
    “The National Transportation
Safety Board 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 reason for the relief first officer’s actions was not
determined.”
    Despite the glaring evidence
in the NTSB’s possession, the essence of the report appears watered down. By
then, post