Sunday November 14 2:22 AM ET

EgyptAir Voice Recorder Recovered

By PAT MILTON Associated Press Writer

NEWPORT, R.I. (AP) - The Navy recovered the cockpit voice recorder from EgyptAir Flight 990, which could tell investigators why the jet crashed into the Atlantic two weeks ago, the head of the National Transportation Safety Board said Saturday.

The recorder was recovered at 10:12 p.m EST Saturday from the midst of wreckage deep in the Atlantic, NTSB chairman James Hall said.

``I am very relieved,'' Hall said. ``We are hopeful that we will have good voice information off this recorder.''

Navy Rear Adm. William Sutton said the cockpit voice recorder was recovered by Deep Drone, a remote-controlled underwater robot. The recorder, which was bent on one side, was found not far from where investigators detected a signal from its pinger, which had come detached. A name plate identifying the box also was missing.

The so-called black box was hauled up within minutes and taken aboard the USS Grapple, where it was to be held overnight.

On Sunday morning, the box was to be taken to the nearby USS Austin and then taken by helicopter to Andrews Air Force Base outside of Washington, accompanied by the FBI. From there, the box was to be driven to the NTSB laboratory in Washington for analysis. It was expected to arrive in Washington at noon Sunday.

EgyptAir officials will be helping NTSB investigators interpret the information, Hall said.

An EgyptAir official has said the cockpit voice recorder had a 30-minute tape. While not the two-hour digital models recommended by the NTSB, the tape should have lasted long enough to record conversations as the plane climbed 33,000 feet and then began to plummet to the sea about 40 minutes after the flight from New York to Cairo took off.

The flight data recorder, which was retrieved on Tuesday, and the cockpit voice recorder could tell investigators what doomed the Boeing 767, which crashed Oct. 31 in the ocean off the Massachusetts island of Nantucket, killing all 217 people aboard.

Investigators continue to focus on all possible causes for the crash, including mechanical problems. Officials say they are not leaning toward any specific theory.

NTSB officials said investigators will travel to Seattle this week to use a Boeing 767 flight simulator. NTSB investigator Greg Phillips said information from the flight data recorder would be entered into the simulator to study how the airplane would react.

As for the search for wreckage, Hall said he would talk to Navy officials on Sunday about how to proceed with the recovery operation. The cockpit voice recorder was found a day before weather conditions were expected to deteriorate.

Investigators were hoping the voice recorder would provide answers to questions raised by information gleaned from the flight data recorder.

Preliminary data released Friday showed that the plane was put into a dive so steep and fast that passengers would briefly have been rendered weightless. And both engines were shut off before the aircraft climbed briefly out of its dive and then turned and plunged into the ocean.

One veteran pilot said the actions taken on the Boeing 767, such as shutting off the engines, seemed to be the exact opposite of what would be done by someone trying to save the plane.

``Someone on that airplane was trying to make that airplane crash and they succeeded,'' said the aviator, a former United Airlines pilot with 7,000 hours piloting 767s, who spoke to The Associated Press on the condition of anonymity.

Barry Schiff, a former TWA 767 pilot from Los Angeles and currently an aviation accident investigator, said the data shows that some human factor was responsible rather than a system failure.

``I racked my brain and I can't think of any emergency that would lead to these maneuvers,'' said Schiff.

The pilots suggested that the wild roller coaster maneuvers could be evidence of a struggle for the controls, perhaps during a skyjacking or a suicide attempt.

``Those are contrary moves with contrary motives indicative of a struggle in the cockpit,'' said Schiff.

But they noted that while anyone could put the plane into a dive, only someone who had knowledge of the cockpit layout on a commercial airliner would be able to figure out how to shut down the engines.

The flight data also showed the plane's elevators - the flaps on the plane's tail that bend down or up to raise or lift the plane's nose - were uneven during the descent, indicating a major problem.

The elevators are designed to operate in unison. Investigators are trying to determine if the elevator split was caused by the plane's breakup, a jamming problem in one of the elevators, crew panic, or even a struggle for control by two people in the cockpit.

Barry Trotter, a former senior investigator with the NTSB and commercial airline pilot, said that while a pilot might turn off an engine if there was a fire, it would be highly improbable for both engines to be on fire at the same time.

And there is no indication in the information released so far that there was any fire on board the aircraft.

``The question is why they initiated the descent from the very beginning,'' said Trotter.

A sudden decompression or fire would set off the master warning in the cockpit, which indicates a potentially major problem. However, an alarm apparently was triggered not at the beginning of the dive, when it could have signaled a reason for the sudden descent, but midway through it when the plane reached a velocity close to the speed of sound.

In addition, the cockpit crew never communicated with air traffic controllers to report any problem.

In the case of Flight 990, the pilot and co-pilot both underwent routine physical and psychological checkups within the past five months, the airline's chairman said Saturday.

Pilot Ahmed el-Habashy and co-pilot Adel Anwar were pronounced fit after their exams, said Mohammed Fahim Rayan. El-Habashy was examined 10 days before the Oct. 31 crash and Anwar less than five months before. .

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