The black boxes of EgyptAir Flight 804 – badly damaged when they were found by searchers – are being repaired and authorities hope they can help solve the mystery of what caused the plane to crash into the Mediterranean Sea last month.
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The Paris prosecutor’s office yesterday said it was opening a “full investigation into involuntary homicide”.
The restoration of the black box comes as French authorities opened a manslaughter investigation into the crash on Monday, saying that there had yet been no clear evidence that an act of extremism had downed the plane.
The Airbus went down in the eastern Mediterranean en route from Paris to Cairo on May 19 and all 66 people on board were killed.
Next, the investigators will start trying to remove more salt deposits from the cockpit voice recorder – which will give a window into the final moments as the pilot and co-pilot presumably battled to save the jet.
The repaired black boxes will be returned to Cairo for analysis in Egypt’s aviation ministry laboratories, the committee previously said. The plane suddenly vanished from the radar as it soared over the Mediterranean from Paris to Cairo on May 19.
Agnes Thibault-Lecuivre, a spokeswoman for the prosecutor’s office, said investigators do not believe the plane crash was deliberate.
Egyptian investigators confirmed the aircraft had made a 90-degree left turn followed by a 360-degree turn to the right before hitting the sea.
A flight-data recorder will store technical parameters from the previous 25 hours of a plane’s operations.
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Asked if the prosecutor was looking into terrorism at this stage, an official said: “No”.
