Gameel Al-Batouti

Gameel Al-Batouti was a pilot for EgyptAir and a former officer for the Egyptian Air Force. He was born in the farming community of Kafr al-Dabusi, Dakahlia Governorate, Egypt. His father was a mayor and a landowner, and family members were well educated and affluent. He was conscripted into the Egyptian Air Force, where he was trained as a pilot and flight instructor. He then worked for a time as an instructor at the Egypt Aviation Academy. His position there was described by one colleague as “high profile”. While in the Air Force, he served as a pilot in both the 1967 Six-Day War and the 1973 Yom Kippur War. He was hired by EgyptAir on 8 September 1987. He held type ratings for the Boeing 737-200, Boeing 767-200 and the 767-300. At the time of the crash, he had logged 12,538 hours of flight time, with 5,755 as pilot in command and 5,191 in the 767. Al-Batouti was approaching mandatory retirement (aviation regulations prevented him from flying as a commercial airline pilot after age 60), and had planned to split his time between a 10-bedroom villa outside of Cairo and a beach house near El Alamein. At the time of his death, Al-Batouti was the most senior first officer flying the 767 at EgyptAir. He had not been promoted to captain because he declined to sit for the exam for his Airline Transport Pilot Licence (ATPL) rating. The ATPL study materials and exam are conducted in English, the international language of aviation, and Al-Batouti did not have sufficient English proficiency. Once he reached 55, the possibility of promotion was further hindered by EgyptAir policy which prevented promotions after that age. On 31 October 1999, he and 216 passengers and crew on board EgyptAir Flight 990 were killed when it crashed into the Atlantic Ocean about 60 miles southeast of Nantucket Island, Massachusetts. The US National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) concluded and stated that the crash was caused by a series of deliberate flight control inputs to the aircraft made by Al-Batouti, while being alone in the cockpit and in the position of relief first officer. The NTSB went on to state that the reason for his inputs were “not determined”.