The unfortunate plane’s black box recorder had revealed that the co-pilot had left the cockpit for the bathroom only to find that the door was locked when he returned.
The pilot had then altered the autopilot to bring it to below ground level and manually switched it to maximum speed. Someone was pounding on the cockpit door as the plane went down. The pilot never once called for help. The plane started losing altitude at 38,000 feet and went down swiftly; Namibia’s Civil Aviation Department had told CNN when the crash happened.
On October 31, 1999, Egypt Air Flight 990 (New York to Cairo) had crashed near Massachusetts, killing 217 people. According to CNN, the plane had plunged almost 14,000 feet in 36 seconds. The Egyptian officials had denied that accusation, and had blamed a mechanical error.
Before the crash, the plane’s pilot had apparently excused himself to go to the washroom. The black box recorder had then picked up unintelligible commotion and banging on the door.As the plane crashed, the captain was heard trying to right the plane, saying, “Pull with me. Pull with me.”
On October 11, 1999, an Air Botswana pilot, who had been grounded for medical reasons, had boarded a plane and took off. A March 27, 2015 CNN report adds: “Once in the air, he made several demands, including speaking with the country’s President. Attempts were made to negotiate with him, but the pilot had stated he was going to crash into other planes that were parked at the airport. That’s what he did. He was the only fatality in the incident.”
On December 19, 1997, Silk Air Flight 185 (Jakarta to Singapore) had crashed in Indonesia, killing 104 people on board. The plane had made a steep descent from its cruising altitude of 35,000 feet and crashed. Indonesian authorities weren’t sure exactly what had happened, though US investigators suggested the captain might have switched off the flight recorders and caused the plane to dive - possibly after his co-pilot had left the cockpit.
At the time of the crash, investigators noted, the pilot had been experiencing significant financial difficulties and had work-related problems.On August 21, 1994, a Royal Air Maroc Flight 630 had lost control and crashed into the Atlas Mountains, the 2,500-km long mountain range passing through Algeria, Morocco and Tunisia. En route to Casablanca from the central Moroccan city of Agadir, this flight had 40 passengers and four crewmembers on board.
The pilot was said to have disconnected the autopilot and flown the plane into the mountain on purpose. The Moroccan Pilot’s Union denied that the pilot would have done that deliberately.