Relatives of last year's Egypt Air crash victims will travel to the United States on Sunday to mark the first anniversary of the disaster that left 217 people dead, airline officials said Saturday.
Some family members told reporters they would throw wreaths of flowers into the Atlantic where the Boeing 767 went down shortly after take-off from New York's John F. Kennedy airport on October 31, 1999.
A US-led probe into the incident has yet to uncover the cause of the crash, but leaks from US investigators have fueled speculation that a deliberate action by the relief co-pilot made the flight plummet into the ocean.
Egyptian pilots and government officials have angrily denied the theory, pointing instead to unidentified radar data or mechanical problems in parts of the plane's tail section that direct the aircraft up or down.
Egypt Air has agreed to transport two family members of each victim free of charge to New York for the anniversary, airline officials said.
A ceremony had been scheduled to take place in Cairo on Tuesday, but it has been postponed so families can travel to the United States, the officials said -- CAIRO (AFP)
© 2000 Al Bawaba (www.albawaba.com)
