| August 13, 2000
http://www.voila.co.uk/News/afp/int/000812173128.qx1ja9xf.html CAIRO (AFP) - - Egyptian aviation officials are asking to see radar information witheld from the probe into last year's EgyptAir Flight 990 crash to explain high-speed radar images near the plane in its final moments, AFP learned Saturday. An AFP review of 1,665 pages of documents relating to the crash revealed a letter from Egyptian Civil Aviation Authority chief Abdel Fattah Kato complaining that apparently "classified" US Air Force data had not been made available. In the documents, released on Friday and presented on the website of the US National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB), Kato does not give credence to a theory that the plane was hit by a missile, but stresses "the need to investigate fully what the Flight 990 crew might have seen. "The investigation of this accident has produced radar data showing three high-speed returns in the area of, and along the path of, Flight 990. The data shows these returns crossing Flight 990's path just before the airplane began its dive," he wrote to US Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) on June 18. Such radar images could be planes with their transponders turned off, missiles or atmospheric clutter or "strobing." Kato said air traffic controllers had cleared Flight 990 to pass through military "Warning Areas 506 and 105A just prior to the accident. "It is difficult to understand why data concerning the characteristics of radar used in connection with United States civil aviation is classified and why it is unavailable to analyze apparent targets that were in the vicinity of Flight 990," he wrote to FAA administrator Jane F. Garvey. Mohsen el-Missiry, an Egyptian investigator into the accident, which killed 217 people off the US coast last October, told reporters in Washington Friday that Egypt was continuing to request more radar data. "Additional work remains to be done, particularly in ... gaining additional radar information," he said at a press conference to announce the release of the information. "Egypt will continue to pursue the truth behind this tragedy," he said. In his letter, Kato also wrote that "it is apparent from the ATC (air traffic control) transcript that no FAA controller was actually watching Flight 990 at the time of the accident and for several minutes after."
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