EgyptAir crash team investigate 'chaos' in cockpit

THE two pilots of EgyptAir flight 990, which crashed last month killing all 217 on board, may have been fighting in the cockpit.

New evidence suggests the pilots could have been pushing and pulling in opposite directions on the control column - but investigators believe they will not make any more progress until the second black box flight recorder from the aircraft is found.

Data from an already recovered flight recorder seems only to have raised new questions as to what brought down the New York-to-Cairo flight on October 31. The Boeing 767 was flying in perfect weather, and the investigators only know that the plane reached its cruising altitude of 33,000 feet, then began a controlled descent. This then turned into a steep dive before the aircraft pulled out steeply at 16,700 feet. It climbed sharply to 24,000 feet and then began its final descent, breaking up as it hit the heavier air of the lower atmosphere at 10,000 feet.

According to the latest evidence, the flight recorder was either switched off or failed during the jet's final moments, but only after both engines had been stopped manually.

During the dive, the aircraft raced through what is known as Vne, its never-exceed speed of Mach 0.86 to almost Mach 1.0 - the speed of sound, which varies according to altitude.

At some stage during the descent, those not strapped into their seats would have experienced weightlessness.

The fact that the engines had been switched off suggests that the second dive occurred after the aircraft stalled and literally fell out of the sky. There would have been no chance of reigniting the engines.

Investigators are pinning their hopes on the recovery of the cockpit voice recorder to help answer many disturbing questions. Were the pilots fighting? Did someone attack them? Was it an attempted hijacking that went wrong?

EgyptAir has recently been criticised for not reinforcing the doors from the cabin to the flight deck on its aircraft. The passengers included some two dozen senior Egyptian military officers returning home from the United States west coast - perhaps a tempting target for possible terrorists.

Alternatively, did a flight-deck window panel fail? When this happened to a British Airways 111 in 1990, the aircraft's captain was dragged out of his seat and it took the combined efforts of two cabin- crew members to drag him back into the aircraft and allow the co- pilot to make an emergency landing.

Another possibility is that one of the two pilots collapsed over the controls and that, in the ensuing dive, the engines were switched off in a last-ditch attempt to slow the aircraft.

There was no good reason for the initial controlled descent and the crew should have sought air-traffic control permission before making such a change. If anything, the aircraft could have been expected to climb further to nearer 40,000 feet for the long flight, reducing fuel consumption due to the lower atmospheric pressure at the higher altitude.

An autopsy of the flight crew could give further clues if the bodies can be found and identified.

Many in the industry will have two possibilities at the back of their minds. The first is that there could be a manufacturing or design fault. This could create havoc in the industry, as almost 800 Boeing 767s are in service worldwide, including on flights from Scotland to London.

The second possibility is that a pilot attempted suicide. A recent accident of a Boeing 737 of Singapore Airlines subsidiary Silk Air is widely believed to have been a suicide by the captain, who switched off the flight recorders minutes beforehand.

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