SU-GAP, the aircraft involved in the accident, at Düsseldorf in 1992.
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Occurrence summary | |
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Date | 31 October 1999 |
Summary |
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Site | Atlantic Ocean, 100 km (62 mi) S of Nantucket |
Passengers | 203 |
Crew | 14 |
Fatalities | 217 (all) |
Survivors | 0 |
Aircraft type | Boeing 767-366ER |
Aircraft name | Tuthmosis III |
Operator | EgyptAir |
Registration | SU-GAP |
Flight origin | Los Angeles International Airport, Los Angeles, California, United States |
Stopover | John F. Kennedy International Airport, New York City, New York, United States |
Destination | Cairo International Airport, Cairo, Egypt |
Pre-accident photos of SU-GAP from Airliners.net |
EgyptAir Flight 990 (MS990/MSR990) was a regularly scheduled flight from Los Angeles International Airport, United States, to Cairo International Airport, Egypt, with a stop at John F. Kennedy International Airport, New York City. On 31 October 1999, the Boeing 767 operating the route crashed into the Atlantic Ocean about 60 miles (100 km) south of Nantucket Island, Massachusetts, killing all 217 people on board. The official probable cause of the crash was deliberate action by the relief first officer.
As the crash occurred in international waters, the responsibility for investigating the accident fell to the Egyptian Civil Aviation Authority (ECAA) per International Civil Aviation Organization Annex 13. As the ECAA lacked the resources of the much larger American National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB), the Egyptian government asked the NTSB to handle the investigation. Two weeks after the crash, the NTSB proposed handing the investigation over to the Federal Bureau of Investigation, as the evidence suggested that a criminal act had taken place and that the crash was intentional rather than accidental. This proposal was unacceptable to the Egyptian authorities, and hence the NTSB continued to lead the investigation. As the evidence of a deliberate crash mounted, the Egyptian government reversed its earlier decision and the ECAA launched its own investigation. The two investigations came to very different conclusions: the NTSB concluded that the relief first officer Gameel Al-Batouti deliberately crashed the plane, while the ECAA determined that the accident was caused by mechanical failure of the aircraft's elevator control system.