THE FOREIGN PAPERS ARE PRINTING MORE OF THE TRUTH, EVEN THOUGH AP IS THE ORIGINATOR OF THE INFORMATION!

EgyptAir pilots talked `like pals'

Flight 990's voice recorder is readied for transport yesterday.

Recorder shows no signs of fight in cockpit: Source

By Pat Milton

Associated Press NEWPORT, R.I. - Cockpit voice recordings from EgyptAir Flight 990 show the pilot and co-pilot talking ``like pals'' before they desperately try to fix a problem, minutes before the plane crashed, a source close to the investigation said yesterday.

``Something happens. Alarms go off. Both work to try to fix it,'' the source said. ``There is some kind of problem that they're dealing with. It gets progressively worse. And the tape stops.''

No conclusions about what caused the crash could be drawn from an initial review of the cockpit recorder, federal officials said last night. But the source said initially the pilot and co-pilot talk ``like pals'' and work together, which would likely rule out hijacking, suicide or a fight between the two.

Investigators don't know if it's a mechanical problem or some explosive device, the source said.

In a statement last night, National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) chairman James Hall said no conclusions could be drawn from the initial review of the tape. The recorder was found to be in good condition and it provided about 31 1/2 minutes of data, he said.

The source said the first 28 minutes of recordings appeared normal, then the emergency apparently occurred.

The New York-to-Cairo jetliner crashed into the Atlantic off Massachusetts' Nantucket Island on Oct. 31, killing all 217 people aboard, including 21 Canadians.

A second source said it was too early to tell how well the pilot and co-pilot were working together or on what they were working, only that they were not working against each other, the Washington Post reports.

Sources cautioned, however, that the NTSB's recorder specialists can perform near miracles in analyzing sounds from even damaged tape. No attempt has been made yet to perform a computerized ``sound spectrum analysis'' of the recorder, nor to fully translate what was said.

EgyptAir officials are in Washington to provide Arabic translation.

Hall said a Cockpit Voice Recorder Group, directed by the NTSB and including representatives from Egypt, the Federal Aviation Administration, Boeing Aircraft and Pratt & Whitney Engines, would meet today to begin a thorough review of the recorder.

After a two-week search, the recorder was found Saturday night by a remote-operated robot, and yesterday it was delivered to NTSB headquarters in Washington.

Preliminary data from the plane's flight data recorder showed that the Boeing 767's autopilot was switched off and the plane was put into a dive so steep and fast that passengers would briefly have felt weightless. And both engines were shut off before the aircraft climbed briefly out of its dive and then turned and dropped into the ocean.

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

The cockpit voice recorder was found amid the plane's debris by Deep Drone, a remote-controlled robot.

The head of the FBI's Boston office, Barry Mawn, said more than 250 FBI agents had conducted several hundred interviews related to the crash, but that there was no evidence yet that a crime had been committed.

Analysts were particularly anxious to glean from the tape whether there was a cockpit intruder or a struggle between the pilot and co-pilot.

Investigators say the speed of descent from 33,000 feet to 16,000 feet would have created weightlessness in the jet for about 30 seconds, so that anyone not buckled into their seats would have been crashing about the cabin.

Passengers would have been weightless

The jet plummeted so swiftly it came close to breaking the speed of sound. It had only been in the air 40 minutes and the pilots did not alert air traffic controllers to any distress.

After the plane began plunging, the left and right elevators split, with one going up and one going down.

These plates at the rear of the horizontal stabilizer normally operate in tandem, making the plane either climb or descend. They are designed to split from each other if the two pilots' control columns are pushed in opposite directions with at least 23 kilograms of force.

The plane was designed that way to enable the pilots to control at least one of the two elevators if control cables jammed on either pilot's control column. However, investigators were forced to consider the possibility that there was a fight in the cockpit and the two pilots - or others - were pulling in opposite directions.

The plane quickly began pulling out of its dive. The plane climbed from 16,000 feet to 24,000 feet, according to radar data, then apparently stalled and fell into the ocean. Investigators have been poring over psychological and medical records of the pilot and co-pilot. As well, passengers - including dozens of Egyptian military officers - and crew are under investigation, to determine if they may have been targets of a terrorist attack or if any may have had a motive.

Saturday, EgyptAir chairman Mohammed Fahim Rayan said pilot Ahmed Habashy and co-pilot Adel Anwar had undergone routine physical and psychological checkups in the past five months and had been deemed fit.