November 15, 1999
Web posted at: 5:13 p.m. EST (2213 GMT)

In this story: Language barrier complicates process 'No conclusions' so far from cockpit tape RELATED STORIES, SITES

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- National Transportation Safety Board Chairman Jim Hall said Monday "we are concentrating our efforts on determining from the evidence, including the cockpit voice recorder, whether or not this investigation will remain under the leadership of the NTSB."

In the case of a criminal act, oversight of the investigation into the October 31 crash of EgyptAir Flight 990 would shift to the FBI.

VIDEO What do investigators hope to learn from the cockpit voice recorder? CNN's Carl Rochelle has the answer. (November 15) QuickTime Play Real 28K 80K Windows Media 28K 80K     BACKGROUND: EgyptAir Flight 990 took off early on October 31 from New York's Kennedy International Airport. The Boeing 767 climbed to 33,000 feet before plunging into the sea south of Nantucket Island, Massachusetts, about 40 minutes after takeoff. All 217 people aboard were killed. The National Transportation Safety Board is in charge of the investigation, using a command center in Newport, Rhode Island. Recovered wreckage is being brought to Quonset Point, a former Navy base across Narragansett Bay from Newport.     MESSAGE BOARD Plane crashes

Hall also said that, "because of the quality of the cockpit voice recorder and the extensive information contained on the flight data recorder, I am confident that many of the questions we have, you have, and the individuals following this investigation have around the world have, will be answered."

He would not elaborate on what that information was.

Complicating what Hall called the "painstaking process of reading out a cockpit voice recorder," is a language barrier.

Hall said the flight crew was not speaking English most of the time. The NTSB has added more translators and interpreters to the investigation.

The Navy, meanwhile, recalled ships from the crash area Monday because of rough seas -- conditions that are expected to last for several more days.

Other developments Monday:

• If the NTSB needs to recover more debris and human remains from the sea floor in order to finish its investigation, the work may be done by private ships contracted by the Navy, sources close to the probe told CNN. What remains have been found so far have been brought to a temporary morgue set up at a former Navy base in Rhode Island.
• A judge in Providence, Rhode Island, cleared the way for the issuing of death certificates to relatives of those who perished on Flight 990. The certificates will say that each victim is presumed dead, even if their remains have not been found and identified. That should help families of the victims deal with legal matters such as settling estates.

The cockpit voice recorder was flown to the NTSB headquarters in Washington on Sunday after the Navy retrieved it from the ocean floor late Saturday, some 60 miles off the Massachusetts island of Nantucket.

Paul Turner, former director of the NTSB's audio lab, said investigators' work will include trying to correlate the data on the cockpit voice recorder and data from the flight data recorder, which was recovered last Tuesday.

"The cockpit voice recorder (contains) radio transmissions ... to the ground, and the flight data recorder will also indicate when the transmitter is on," Turner explained. "Put those two together and then you run them together and you can then correlate the events that occur on the cockpit voice recorder and the flight data recorder."

Correspondent Carl Rochelle contributed to this report.

Note: Pages will open in a new browser window

External sites are not endorsed by CNN Interactive.