HOPE FADES IN SEARCH

November 1, 1999
		The Coast Guard announced there is little hope in finding survivors from the EgyptAir 990 crash in the Atlantic. Margaret Warner leads a discussion on the rescue efforts and search for answers.

Oct. 26, 1999: Payne Stewart's plane crashes in South Dakota July 19, 1999: John F. Kennedy Jr.'s plane crashes off Martha's Vineyard Sept. 7, 1998: The investigation of the SwissAir crash May 11, 1998: The FAA orders inspections of 737s   EgyptAir National Transportation Safety Board U.S. Embassy Cairo John F. Kennedy International Airport Aviation Safety Network Federal Aviation Administration	MARGARET WARNER: For more, we're joined by Michael Goldfarb, a former chief of staff of the Federal Aviation Administration. He now runs an aviation consulting firm. John Hansman, a professor of aeronautics and astronautics at MIT. And Jack McGeorge, formerly with the Secret Service, who now runs a firm that advises government and industry clients on security matters. Michael Goldfarb, let's start with what we do know. What are the most telling clues already in hand that will help investigators decide what happened here? MICHAEL GOLDFARB: Well, Margaret, obviously early speculation tends to prove wrong but this is one of the most baffling aviation accidents. The enormity of this tragedy, not just for the families but from the aviation standpoint, planes don't fall out of the sky at 33,000 feet, and yet we've had two or three, you know, incidents, serious accidents over the last three years. We went 50 years without having a plane fall into the North Atlantic. The last several seconds -- what happened in the cockpit for a rapid descent, lots of theories, very few answers. And that's why the rapid recovery from the ocean floor of the flight data recorder and the cockpit voice recorder and other things will help us here. So, clearly the pilots for some reason had a sudden loss of control. And even the electrical systems were working at lower altitudes. It's truly a baffling, at this stage, you know, an unanswered event. MARGARET WARNER: John Hansman, what would you answer to that in terms of what we know based on, for instance, the very rapid descent, or the fact that the radar was picking up signals during the descent; there was no mayday from the pilots? JOHN HANSMAN: Yes. The fact that it was -- there was no mayday or indication from the pilots -- indicated that they were not aware of any problem up until the beginning of the descent. The fact that the descent was so fast, faster than you would do in any normal maneuver, indicates that this airplane was essentially in an uncontrolled descent. Now we don't know at this point what the cause of the uncontrolled descent is. But we do know that they wouldn't have been doing it on purpose. It also indicates from the radar track that the descent slowed at lower altitudes, so we'll be trying to understand why that was. MARGARET WARNER: And what about the fact that, as Michael Goldfarb just referred to, and Betty Ann's piece did, too, explain the radar and the fact -- what that tells us, the fact that there was still a certain kind of a signal even midway through the descent or nearly midway?
	Tracking by radar
	MICHAEL GOLDFARB: Yes. The radars that we use to look at air traffic or we use for air traffic don't actually measure altitude. On board the aircraft, there's an instrument which is called a transponder which actually takes the measured altitude from the aircraft and sends it down as a digital code. So the last 30 seconds, or the 30 seconds after the airplane began to descend, the transponder was still working and was still sending out its signal, which means there was at least electrical power to the transponder and there was sufficient structural integrity that the antenna for the transponder, which is on the surface of the airplane, was still connected to the cockpit. MARGARET WARNER: Now, Jack McGovern (McGeorge), we also heard NTSB Chairman Hall and others there say that really there's almost - there's very little debris on the surface. There's only one body recovered. Does that tell us anything? JACK McGEORGE: In the context of whether it was an explosion or not, it might suggest that whatever it was wasn't very big... MARGARET WARNER: Excuse me. Mr. McGeorge. JACK McGEORGE: That's quite okay. I understand. I think it's over because the plane came down largely intact and did not break up obviously at higher altitude. I don't think it tells us anything terribly significant yet in the context of might it have been some deliberate act and, if so, what kind. MARGARET WARNER: And, was it sabotage or was it mechanical failure? It doesn't really tell you? JACK McGEORGE: Not from my perspective, no. MARGARET WARNER: All right. So, Michael Goldfarb, talk about the two things that -- you mention the flight data recorder that they think they heard this ping. They think they may be able to recover that, and then also this big piece. MICHAEL GOLDFARB: Yes. MARGARET WARNER: That they won't describe to us or haven't described to us. But what could that yield? MICHAEL GOLDFARB: Well, let's start with the flight data recorder. This plane is relatively new, it is fairly young. Ten years is young. Most planes in the last ten years have what's called modern flight data recorders. That simply means there's a lot of sensors. And those sensors tell you everything you need to know about that aircraft. And if they can recover it intact, it's going to give the NTSB a head start here. The size of the piece of the air frame, the fact that it was a larger piece, also is significant. Engines are critical, engines are very important here, given the past history of the 767. So those components if they can get them fairly rapidly given that the ocean is not cooperating like it did in the TWA crash, those components are going to give the NTSB a jump-start. They'll still have a long way to go, but I think it will be revealing if they're intact to have that flight data recorder and also that cockpit voice recorder.
	Recorded evidence, answers?
	MARGARET WARNER: Professor Hansman, tell us a little bit more about what's on both of those kind of recorders. JOHN HANSMAN: Well, the flight data recorder has the parameters, the flight parameters of the airplane. So, it will tell you the altitude, air speed, attitude of the airplane. So if there was some loss of control event where the airplane went into a bizarre maneuver, that would show up in the flight data recorder. The cockpit voice recorder will tell you what the crew was saying but it also pick up any warning signals that were in the cockpit or if there were an explosion on board, it would pick up the acoustic signature of the explosion. MARGARET WARNER: What would you add to that? JACK McGEORGE: Look at the bodies and what happened to them, the shrapnel wounds, burns on the bodies. The recorders, you're looking for sound, sound of the explosion, you're looking for pressure change in the flight data recorder. Was there a big pressure spike? Looking at the...what happened to the metal of the plane, the skin of the plane. Does it petal outward or was it merely sheered? Rivets, were the rivet heads sheered? MARGARET WARNER: Go back to that because I assume what you're talking about now is trying to determine whether it's sabotage or mechanical. JACK McGEORGE: Right. An explosion produces a lot of gas inside the plane at very high pressure. That gas has to go someplace. It will blow the skin of the plane out. When it does that, it looks like you peel a banana and it will have that "petaling" effect that would indicate pressure moving outward. So you would look at that, that would be a pretty good indication, something built up a lot of pressure, like in TWA Flight 800, the rapid expansion of the deflagrating gasoline fumes or in prior unfortunate incidents, the gas produced by an explosive itself - both would produce this "petaling." Looking at the metal itself, there are different metals in an airplane, different materials. They melt at different temperatures. And one of the things they're going to look at is what melted and what didn't. And this will indicate approximate heat of what was going on inside and outside the plane at that moment. Whether the way the plane broke apart, were the rivet heads sheared off? There's all sorts of things, pitting, for example. The forces of an explosion will propel either hot gases certainly and maybe projectiles, pieces of the plane into other pieces of the plane and you would look for that. Many things we'll look at in that debris field. JOHN HANSMAN: It's important to note that at this point we still don't know that there was an explosion. They will be looking for evidence like that but it may very well be that there wasn't. MARGARET WARNER: So what would it... take some of the evidence that Mr. McGeorge described and what would it look like, Professor Hansman, if it wasn't an explosion? JOHN HANSMAN: Well, if you do find that kind of evidence, that would indicate an explosion, if you don't find that evidence, they'll look for other causes. So, for example, if there was a problem in the flight control system that caused the airplane to just go into a descent, that might be a cause. Again that would show up on the flight data recorder. If there was, for example, an uncontained engine failure where shrapnel from the engine went into the fuselage, that could also cause this kind of event.
	Safety of the 767
	MARGARET WARNER: Michael Goldfarb, tell us about the safety record of these 767s? MICHAEL GOLDFARB: It's exemplary and what is confusing here and what is so perplexing is we're speculating and the board over time will come to the cause. MARGARET WARNER: I hope we're not speculating - I hope we're just telling people what to look for, but go ahead. MICHAEL GOLDFARB: Right, but invariably it's usually a series of things, a series of things that come together. But the accidents are troubling because the plane itself has a wonderful safety record. We don't have planes -- MARGARET WARNER: Just one fatal air crash due to mechanical problems. MICHAEL GOLDFARB: Right. Exactly. We don't have planes fall out of the sky. I mean, most accidents, 80 or 90 percent are either controlled flight into terrain, which simply means into the land, or landing and takeoff kinds of situations. So a lot of the safety things we've taken care of. Terminal Doppler Weather radar, wind shears. We've solved the problems and yet we have the problems of catastrophic failure perhaps at high altitudes. That is going to require the aviation community redoubling its efforts to find that last piece here on this and the TWA crash quite frankly. MARGARET WARNER: Professor Hansman, does it ever happen there's a class of aircraft that has an exemplary flying record with very little problems, very few problems, and that then a mechanical problem nonetheless causes a fatal crash? I'm not saying that very well but how much does it mean that it's got a great safety record up to now? JOHN HANSMAN: Well, you have to understand that all our airplanes right now have very good safety records. A 767 is actually one of the best. It was the first airplane to be certified to fly across oceans on only two engines. But our system is so safe now that it takes an extremely unusual event to cause a fatal accident of this type. So the accidents that show up are ones that we don't know about. Okay, the causes that we know about we fix. And that's why we're trying to understand this one.
	Safety of EgyptAir?
	MARGARET WARNER: And then, Michael Goldfarb, what about the sort of safety performance of EgyptAir? MICHAEL GOLDFARB: I think we have -- aviation's global now, and unfortunately the nation states haven't kept pace with one set of standards for safety. So people get on a plane that may have a co-chairing agreement get on an American Airlines flight. Then it becomes another airline that carries them further. EgyptAir has had some problems -- in the last ten years no crashes -- but the oversight is the responsibility of the Egyptian government and they have a different set of standards. Hopefully they comply with the United States FAA set of standards, but we don't police the world in that regard and there needs to be one set of international standards for safety and I believe the world have will have move towards that. MARGARET WARNER: But you're saying there is a set of standards but the policing function... MICHAEL GOLDFARB: You can't land in the United States -- a foreign carrier cannot land in a U.S. airport without complying with F.A.A. worthiness directives and safety directives. That does not mean that carriers around the world, you know, keep their planes necessarily up to the same levels of safety that you might find in the United States. And the public has to be aware as they travel that those are choices they make as the professor said, it's an exceedingly safe system, but, you know, we have to watch as air travel grows that we can keep pace. MARGARET WARNER: Mr. McGeorge, an interesting theme of the last 48 hours, or 24, 36, whatever it's been -- from President Clinton on down, outwardly and publicly and saying don't jump to any conclusions about terrorism. This is quite different from the immediate postmortems after the TWA crash. JACK McGEORGE: Yes it is and I think it's a very good policy. We jumped way too soon, some people did, and that was a mistake. We tend to... We made policy, perhaps as a result of that crash, that was not warranted. To take and let the evidence as it unfolds show us what really happened and then make our policy decisions and our procedural decisions based on that -- that's the appropriate thing. Right now we don't know that this was deliberate. We don't know anything really. Plane fell down with tragic loss of life. That's all we know. Let us let the evidence tell us where to go from here. MARGARET WARNER: And yet, Professor Hansman, at the same time the FBI has to conduct a parallel criminal investigation in case it turns out to be? JOHN HANSMAN: Well, yeah. If there was some sort of cause that was driven by terrorism or something like that, their ability to collect the data will go away. So they need to be collecting it right now. MARGARET WARNER: Thank you all three very much.