Word: batouti
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...national airline? Hire some Washington spinners and aviation consultants, if the investigation into EgyptAir Flight 990 is anything to go by. After the National Transportation Safety Board reached a preliminary analysis that the crash that killed 217 in October was caused by a suicidal co-pilot, GAMIL EL-BATOUTI, Egypt applied political pressure in Washington and is spending freely on a public relations effort. A slew of experts were hired to press the issue for EgyptAir, including former NTSB chairman CARL VOGT and several former NTSB investigative specialists. Those hires paid off last week, when Aviation Week claimed U.S. investigators...
Along with others around the world, I was saddened by the crash of EgyptAir Flight 990 [WORLD, Nov. 29]. My heart went out to the families of the passengers and crew. I felt the greatest sorrow, however, for the family of relief pilot Gamil el-Batouti. Besides having to deal with the loss of a husband and father, the family had to cope with the anguish of a name destroyed by unproved accusations of mass murder and suicide. The ideal situation would have been to avoid reaching any conclusions before a thorough investigation of the crash had been completed...
Egyptian officials and el-Batouti's family scoff that the NTSB fashioned a chain of events before there was sufficient evidence to rule out mechanical failure. They rail against the flood of premature news leaks and unsubstantiated, sensational headlines. They vehemently deny the notion that a regularly vetted pilot with 35 years' flying experience would suddenly commit mass murder. At least three pilots and some of the 33 air force officers were in the first-class cabin, but no one tried to overpower el-Batouti in the cockpit...
Egyptians are particularly incensed that just three words, in circumstances difficult to interpret, could point to suicide. The words may have been totally misunderstood. El-Batouti was just as likely to be expressing concern at some emergency when he spoke. The phrase was no solemn invocation of death but an everyday expression among Egyptians, murmured at the start of many a mundane task. Suicide defies the holiest precepts of Islam, and for Egyptians it brings unthinkable shame to family and nation. "You can't jump to conclusions from someone quoting the Koran and say this was more than an accident...
...been equally tough to find evidence to support a motive for el-Batouti's suicide, personal or political. His family was devastated. "I had accepted his death as a martyr," said his wife Omayma. "Now they have murdered him." Every one of el-Batouti's colleagues, friends and relatives depicts him as a loving family man, a believer but not a fanatic, respected and well off, content with his imminent retirement, a man who had never displayed the least symptom of psychiatric disorder. "He's a guy who wouldn't hurt a fly," says Los Angeles resident Helal el-Sherif...