November 16, 1999
Web posted at: 6:59 p.m. EST (2359 GMT)

From staff and wire reports

In this story: Apparent cockpit prayer raises questions Plane was pushed in opposite directions RELATED STORIES, SITES

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- The National Transportation Safety Board will remain the lead investigative agency in the crash probe of EgyptAir Flight 990 -- at least for now, NTSB chairman Jim Hall said Tuesday.

Hall said he and FBI Director Louis Freeh agreed more evidence is needed before the investigation becomes a criminal probe.

Also on Tuesday, the State Department announced that the Egyptian government is sending teams of technical experts to the United States to "pool their knowledge and information" with NTSB investigators "to help get to the next steps" in the crash probe, said State Department Spokesman James Rubin.

These teams are due to arrive Wednesday and Thursday. Rubin said the dispatching of the teams should not be characterized as an attempt by the Egyptian government to block the expected handover of the investigation to the FBI.

VIDEO CNN's Ben Wedeman reports that many people in Egypt are convinced the cause of the crash was not mechanical QuickTime Play Real 28K 80K Windows Media 28K 80K    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     ALSO Conspiracy theories abound in Cairo about EgyptAir Flight 990     MESSAGE BOARD Plane crashes

During a Tuesday evening press conference Hall said, "It is only prudent for the NTSB to consult with these experts and officials to fully evaluate this information prior to any final decision on whether the responsibility for this investigation should transfer to the Federal Bureau of Investigation."

"I met today with FBI director Louis Freeh, and he fully concurs in this course of action."

At about 30 minutes after takeoff, when the plane was cruising normally at 33,000 feet (10,058 meters), one of the pilots may have left the cockpit, according to the cockpit voice recorder.

Someone in the cockpit, apparently in the co-pilot's seat, then spoke a prayer, a U.S. official said. The Boeing 767's autopilot was turned off moments later.

The aircraft went into a steep dive, and the engines were cut back and then shut off. At one point, a voice said to pull up the plane.

U.S. linguists reviewing the tape disagree on whether the reference to God suggested a criminal intention or was benign in nature, a government official said.

Although the phrase heard on the cockpit recorder was characterized as a prayer, that doesn't necessarily mean it was related to the cause of the plunge. Arabic speakers, particularly Egyptians, commonly make references to God in everyday statements.

Investigators have assembled a team of Arabic speakers familiar with the dialects used by the pilots to translate the tape more accurately.

In addition to the disconnected autopilot, the flight data recorder has shown that the plane's elevators -- the two horizontal flaps on the plane's tail that move down or up to raise or lower the plane's nose -- were at different angles during the descent, indicating a major problem.

The elevators are designed to operate in unison. Investigators are trying to determine if the elevator split was caused by two people struggling for control in the cockpit, the plane's breakup, a jamming problem in one of the elevators, or crew panic.

In addition to the efforts of the translators, other investigators are trying to match information from the cockpit voice recorder with the flight data recorder and radio transmissions between the plane and ground controllers.

Investigators are working to correlate all these sequences and others in a timeline.

Correspondents Pierre Thomas, Carl Rochelle , John King and The Associated Press and Reuters contributed to this report.

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