EGYPTIAN PLANE CRASHES

November 1, 1999
		The Coast Guard is giving up hope that survivors will be found from Sunday morning's crash of EgyptAir Flight 990. -- Posted 2:30pm ET

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 Federal Bureau of Investigation U.S. Coast Guard American Red Cross

Relatives of the 217 people aboard are moving from a hotel at Kennedy airport to Providence, Rhode Island, nearer the plane's debris field in the Atlantic Ocean. "We believe at this point it is in everyone's best interest to no longer expect we will find survivors," Coast Guard Rear Adm. Richard M. Larrabee said. He explained that the average life expectancy in 58-degree water is five to six hours. Flight 990, a Boeing 767, took off from New York's John F. Kennedy Airport bound for Cairo, but crashed into the sea near Nantucket Island, Massachusetts early Sunday morning. There were 199 passengers and 18 crew members aboard. So far only one body has been officially recovered. Larabee announced that searchers found a "significant piece" of the plane which requires a crane to retrieve it. Other found debris includes seats, cushions, clothing and paperwork. Searchers have also picked up a signal, most likely from one of the "black boxes." The FBI and intelligence agencies were investigating the possibility of sabotage, but authorities said there has been no indication of terrorism. According to officials in both the U.S. and Egypt, the plane was at an altitude of 33,000 feet. Thirty-three minutes after take off, the plane plummeted 13,900 feet in 24 seconds before dropping off radar completely. EgyptAir officials said the airliner gave a distress call before contact was lost. "Contact with the plane was cut suddenly which indicates that something happened suddenly," Ibrahim el-Dimeiri, Egypt's minister of transport, communications and civil aviation, said in Cairo. At the time of the crash, weather at Nantucket was clear with nine miles of visibility and wind of nine mph, the National Weather Service said. The passenger list included 106 Americans, 62 Egyptians, 22 Canadians, three Syrians, two Sudanese and one Chilean according to EgyptAir. Among the passengers aboard were about 30 Egyptian military officers, mostly pilots who had been training in the United States. There was no immediate explanation of the discrepancy between that total of 196 and the figure of 199 given earlier by U.S. officials. EgyptAir has 38 planes and flies to 85 airports around the world. In the past, critics have called for privatization, citing reports of bad management and bad service. This latest crash is the airline's deadliest. In 1976, an EgyptAir Boeing 707 crashed on an approach to the Bangkok, Thailand airport, killing 55 people.