The New York media already have a nickname for the Ramada in John F. Kennedy Airport: Heartbreak Hotel.
Three years ago the families of TWA Flight 800 passengers gathered in the hotel's ballroom to await news of their missing relatives.
Last year, it served as a makeshift waiting room for the families of those aboard the doomed Swissair Flight 111.
With Coast Guard vessels still scouring the Atlantic for wreckage of EgyptAir Flight 990, the ballroom filled with sorrow again yesterday as 30 family members took refuge to wait for what was increasingly likely to be bleak news.
Inside the ballroom Red Cross and EgyptAir officials had set up phone lines for relatives to call home, and grief counsellors worked to ease their wait. Mr George Arion, who had become an unofficial spokesman for the relatives, said he had lost dozens of friends on Flight 990. The owner of the Egyptian newspaper Donia Al Arab, he said many families were still holding on to a slim thread of hope.
"Everybody is sitting around crying and waiting. It's really bad inside there," he said.
In their search for answers, some had begun to question why the EgyptAir flight had gone down near where TWA Flight 800 crashed into the sea in 1996, killing 230 people.
Mr Tamer Omar, the brother of the aircraft's co-pilot, had not seen his sibling for 10 years. It had been the co-pilot's first flight to New York and the two brothers spent six days together in the city, before saying goodbye at Kennedy Airport on Saturday. Surrounded by media cameras, one of the relatives, Mr Sayed Ismael, appeared outside briefly and struggled to tell of losing his younger brother in the disaster.
"I believe in God and that gives me faith. I hope to find my brother. God is supporting us," he said.