He came from a family of pilots. One uncle was an air force captain. Two cousins, like him, flew for the national carrier, EgyptAir.
Mohamed Saeed Shokair died doing what he was born to do, family members said Sunday at a funeral service for the pilot of EgyptAir Flight 804, which crashed into the Mediterranean last week with 66 people on board.
“It was not a job; it was his passion,” Samir Shokair, a cousin, said outside the mosque in eastern Cairo where relatives gathered on a dry, windy evening to bid quiet farewells.
Like all the funerals held across Egypt this weekend for the crash victims, there was no body to bury. Only unidentified human remains and bits of debris have surfaced since the plane went down Thursday morning, confounding investigators and deepening the anguish of family members.
Authorities have dismissed theories that Shokair, 36, or his 24-year-old copilot brought the aircraft down intentionally – as happened with a 1999 EgyptAir flight that originated in Los Angeles and crashed into the waters off New England.
They have described Shokair as a respected veteran with more than 6,000 hours of flying time under his belt – one-third of that at the controls of an A320.
Family members, too, have had to contend with speculation about Shokair’s motives or mental state.
“He was not an extremist,” Samir Shokair said. “He was a popular person, close with everyone. He always wanted to be a pilot.”
Outside the prayer hall, close male relatives in dark suits stood in two rows, greeting mourners with hugs and solemn handshakes. Women waited in an adjacent room, some clutching handkerchiefs close to their faces.
Mohamed Shokair’s father, wearing a gray jacket and open shirt collar, arrived at the mosque at dusk looking drained. He walked with a slight stoop. But when questioned by an Egyptian news crew, he suddenly grabbed the reporter’s microphone and spoke directly into the camera in a calm, forceful voice.
“Mohamed was a good pilot. He had flown a lot of hours – he was not some beginner,” Saeed Shokair said, his eyes fixed. “And he knows God. He never missed a prayer.”
His father told a story about how, a few months ago, airline employees were on the verge of striking over working conditions. Shokair helped organize a dinner meeting for pilots in a Cairo suburb where they reached a decision to avert the work stoppage, winning him praise from civil aviation officials.
“We are a nationalistic people,” his father said. “We should support EgyptAir.”
Sharif Fathy, the civil aviation minister, came to pay his respects, as officials and EgyptAir executives have done at several funerals for crew members. Afterward, Fathy described Shokair as “a trustworthy pilot with enough experience” and rejected speculation that the crash was caused by human error.
“He didn’t do anything wrong,” Fathy said.
Acknowledging the grief of families, Fathy said that recovering the bodies of the victims was “the No. 1 priority” of search teams. He said Egypt had requested additional equipment from private companies and foreign countries to assist in the search, but declined to speculate on the scant clues that have surfaced so far.
Among them is the finding by French civil aviation authorities that automatic messages sent from the aircraft indicated smoke in the cabin shortly before it lost radar contact at 2:30 a.m. Thursday. Although the French agency said it was too early to determine what caused the smoke, aviation experts said the information was consistent with a fire on board.
Fathy, who made headlines in the early hours following the crash for saying terrorism was the most likely cause, declined to speculate any further.
“It doesn’t mean anything so far,” he said. “Smoke can come for many reasons.”
Questions have also surrounded Shokair’s copilot, Mohamed Mamdouh Assem, who the airline said had amassed 2,766 flying hours. Assem’s friends described him as a warm, popular young man who was living out the dream he set for himself as a schoolboy: to fly for EgyptAir, which he joined straight out of aviation school about two years ago.
“He always talked about being a pilot,” said Ahmed Amin, a childhood friend from Cairo. “He was very happy doing what he was doing.”
Assem suffered tragedy about two years ago when his mother died of cancer, Amin said. But he met a woman recently, and the two were making plans to get married.
Shokair was unmarried and had no children, family members said. But he also was planning to settle down; he bought land outside the city where he was going to build a house, his father said.
Those hopes were extinguished Thursday, leaving an elderly father to grieve the loss of his only son.
“I hope whoever took away my son will lose the light in their eyes,” Saeed Shokair said. “Because I’ve lost the light of my eye.”
Special correspondent Omar El Adl contributed to this report.
