It was Egyptair 990, a Boeing 767-300 heading from Kennedy to Cairo, and it was in the 1997-1997 timeframe.
The NTSB pieced together, from physical wreckage, radar tapes from the New York ARTCC, and the plane's recorders, that the relief pilot (who was a very senior pilot with Egyptair) managed to get himself alone in the cockpit by the ruse of sending the copilot back to give a pen to the captain. (Long international flights have to carry two flightcrews--this guy was supposed to fly the plane over the Atlantic and turn it back over to the designated captain for landing in Cairo.)
When he got alone in the cockpit, he disengaged the autopilot, pulled the throttles back to idle, and pushed the controls forward, quietly chanting something like "I believe in Allah". The captain rushed back to the cockpit, and not knowing what was going on, jumped in the other seat and started pulling the plane up and yelling "pull with me, pull with me." He didn't realize that the suicidal guy was pushing the yoke forward. Then the suicidal one cut the power to the engines, which stopped the flight recorders. Radar info after that showed the plane pulling out of the dive, then diving again into the sea.
The NTSB figured this out because they found indications that one control yoke was being pushed forward and the other pulled backward at the same time. So they ruled that the relief pilot intentionally crashed the plane for reasons unknown.
The Egyptian government angrily denied the NTSB's findings and tried to pin the crash on a design fault--Boeing convincingly shot that down quickly.
}:-)4
*edit above: should be "1997-1998." Leadpenny may be at his best between 5-7 am, but I'm not. :)
I have real trouble with the missile theory on TWA 800, simply because out of all the hundreds and hundreds of people on those Navy ships--not the senior brass, but the enlisted men, the 19- and 20-year-olds--not a single one ever came forward? How could an incredible accident like this NOT leak out? Not a single one of those young kids on the bridge, or in the CIC, or handling missiles, or even swabbing the decks, heard or saw some of what happened and decided to risk it all to come out with the news?
I don't know what happened with TWA 800. The center fuel tank explosion theory seems incredibly weak, but if it really was shot down by an American missile, I can't see how somebody wouldn't eventually leak it. That leaves a terrorist missile, and the plane was out of the envelope for engagement by a shoulder-fired IR surface-to-air missile.
}:-)4
I remember reading the guy had lots of family problems, mostly stemming from the fact he failed an upgrade attempt to captain.
As I remember, it was initially reported that there were about 30 fairly senior Egyptian army officers aboard flight 990. They had been participating in a joint U.S./Egyptian military training program and boarded the aircraft at Nellis AFB, NV. The aircraft departed LAX, stopped at Nellis AFB then proceeded to JFK where the rest of the passengers boarded. Later accounts did not mention the details about the Egyptian army officers which led me to theorize that they might have been the reason that the flight was targeted.
Uh, no.