How a Newport cemetery became the final resting place for some EgyptAir crash victims

• EgyptAir Flight 990 crashed into the Atlantic Ocean on Oct. 31, 1999, killing all 217 people on board.
• Newport, Rhode Island, served as the U.S. incident command center due to its proximity and resources.
• The National Transportation Safety Board concluded the crash was likely caused by the relief pilot’s actions.

On Oct. 31, 1999, a flight from Los Angeles made a scheduled stopover at JFK International Airport, taking off from the runway to continue its journey to Cairo, Egypt, at 1:20 a.m. Just half an hour later, though, and minutes after the plane reached its cruising altitude, the commercial aircraft plummeted into the Atlantic Ocean, 60 miles south of Nantucket, killing all 217 people on board.

EgyptAir Flight 990 was the deadliest aviation disaster in the history of EgyptAir and the second-deadliest aviation disaster involving a Boeing 767. However, though the flight originated in Los Angeles, took off from New York and was headed to Egypt, the remains of six unidentified passengers were interred at Newport’s own Island Cemetery and the official memorial sits at Brenton Point State Park, overlooking the very body of water where those passengers perished. 

The reason behind the location of the memorial is remarkably simple. A short written account from Island Cemetery’s records, obtained by The Newport Daily News through Records Manager Zachary Russell,  indicated that Newport had been used as the U.S. incident command center in the immediate aftermath because it was the closest city large enough to accommodate the investigators and families of the victims. A heartbreaking report from The Standard Times in New Bedford, Massachusetts, on the unlikelihood that the investigation would recover intact remains also indicated Newport was the coordination center for search efforts and the families housed in a Newport hotel. 

A New York Times report published at the time states that wreckage from the crash, as well as the bodies of victims, were brought to Naval Base Newport for investigation and identification, though the 2002 Aircraft Accident Brief from the National Transportation Safety Board makes no mention of the city, instead stating that containers of the wreckage were initially stored in a former Naval air hangar at Quonset Point. 

Still, Newport served at least as the gathering site for those in mourning. An interdenominational memorial service was held at Brenton Point State Park that November, alongside members of the U.S. Coast Guard, Red Cross, Salvation Army, National Transportation Safety Board and several public officials. 

The granite memorial would be erected a year later, rough-hewn on three of its four sides to represent the mourners’ pain, according to an article on the memorial by AP reporter David Rising, also stored in Island Cemetery’s records. The inscription reads, “They are not gone from us,” in French, Arabic and English. 

The incident itself was under investigation for two years by the National Transportation Safety Board, which determined the probable cause of the incident lay in the actions of the relief pilot, First Officer Gameel Al-Batouti, who was left in charge of the cockpit while Captain Ahmed El-Habashi went to the bathroom. It concluded that Al-Batouti, a former Egyptian Air Force major and chief flight instructor, manually disengaged the plane’s autopilot during this time, causing it to begin a nosedive. Though El-Habashi had returned and attempted to recover the plane, the NTSB’s investigation into the Cockpit Voice Recorder and Flight Recorder indicated that Al-Batouti did nothing to help the situation, only calmly repeating a phrase in Arabic that translates to “I rely on God.” When El-Habashi managed to pull the plane’s nose up, the report states that Al-Batouti was putting in opposite inputs to turn the plane’s nose down again.

Though initially deferring responsibility of the investigation to the NTSB, the Egyptian Civil Aviation Authority disputed the NTSB report’s conclusion as the result of a “flawed and biased” investigation. It launched a separate investigation in the following weeks, which argued that the probable cause for the incident was not Al-Batouti’s actions, but instead a mechanical failure. 

In a later interview with former NTSB Director of Aviation Safety Bernard Loeb, conducted by the Canadian TV series “Mayday,” Loeb said none of the mechanical failure scenarios presented by the Egyptian investigation matched the flight profile and that the evidence showing the plane had been intentionally flown into the ocean was irrefutable “to anyone who knows anything about investigating airplane accidents.”