An unidentified woman is comforted by two men as she heads to the Ramada Plaza Hotel where families of EgyptAir Flight 990 passengers gathered near John F. Kennedy Airport in New York 31 October 1999. There are 217 people reported missing on the New York to Cairo flight. AFP PHOTO Doug KANTER (AFP)

By Lynne Duke
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, October 31, 1999; 5:31 p.m. EST

NEW YORK - The Ramada Plaza Hotel at Kennedy Airport was decorated Sunday for a children's beauty pageant and a Halloween parade.

Amid the festivities and dressed-up kids with big grins flowed a steady stream of sorrow as families of those aboard Flight 990 were brought in to pray and wait and grieve, an all-too-familiar scene at the hotel.

One minute, 5-year-old Ashley Marrero walked out of the hotel in a frilly dress with a blue ribbon. She'd just won the title "Little Miss Sweetheart."

The next minute, a woman walking into the hotel collapsed, wailing, onto the pavement. Two men rushed to help her up. Behind her walked a woman in traditional Muslim garb – an ankle-length black dress, her head covered in a scarf.

"It's very sad, what happened with the flight," said Ashley's mother, Marisol Amelis.

Inside, 20 to 30 relatives gathered, one family per table, consoled by workers from the Red Cross, Muslim clerics and Mayor Rudolph Giuliani.

"It's horrible in there. Everybody's crying, everybody is in mourning," Mahmoud Hamza, who lost two friends on the flight, said as he fought back tears.

"There were a lot of women crying," said Lateef Sadiq, a Muslim cleric from the Masjid Khalipha mosque in Brooklyn. "One lady lost her mother and father."

Robert Wingate of the Red Cross said: "We have people who are still holding out hope for their loved ones. Then there are those who know immediately what this means," said

The Ramada has been a center for grieving relatives before, earning it the nickname "Heartbreak Hotel." Three years ago, in the days following the crash of TWA Flight 800, hundreds of family members converged here. The scene was repeated in 1998 after the crash of SwissAir Flight 111.

At Los Angeles International Airport, where Flight 990 originated, religious leaders and others were available to take phone calls from relatives and console one family that arrived, weeping.

Members of a Los Angeles mosque mourned two of the pilots, both frequent visitors at the Islamic Center of Southern California during their stopovers in the city.

One of the pilots was Hatem Rushdy, said mosque member Aboubakr El-Tawansy. He said he has know Rushdy for about five years, since the pilot helped his daughter on a flight from Los Angeles to Egypt.

"He upgraded her seats because she wasn't breathing well in a smoking area and was very generous with her," El-Tawansy said. "Since she heard the news she's been crying and crying."

At the Ramada Inn in New York, Ghazi Khankan, a Muslim cleric from the Islamic Center of Westbury, said many family members took comfort in their deep religious faith.

"We are ordered to be patient as much as possible from the moment we are born," Khankan said. "God knows when we are going to die. It is not a punishment, it is fate."