Maybe it was a missile. Maybe the investigators are missing some crucial piece of evidence. She didn't want to believe what the facts seem to indicate, and quite frankly, neither do I. Please don't get me wrong when I say this, but I hope that my friend and some Egyptian officials are right in their assertion that a bomb or a missile forced flight 990 to plummet into the Atlantic. I hope the officials are right when they claim the crash was the result of a plot to kill 33 military officers who were on board the aircraft. I hope they are right about a terrorist plot because the more probable alternative is too scary to contemplate.
Pilots are by no means a perfect breed.
They have problems just like the rest of us. But like the complicated machines they operate, we expect them to work flawlessly. To never tire, to never malfunction and to never purposely place our lives in jeopardy. In all my years of flying, I've heard of only two instances when a commercial airline pilot knowingly compromised the safety of an aircraft. The first news came while I was lounging poolside at a layover hotel somewhere in the Caribbean.