Air-crash investigators said the cockpit voice recorder from EgyptAir Flight 804 has been retrieved from the eastern Mediterranean, four weeks after the jet disappeared from radar screens with 66 people on board.
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Searchers have also found pieces of the missing jet’s cabin and fuselage have been found at “several sites”. The box had to be pulled out in stages.
Later Thursday a committee official told the Retuers news agency that the memory unit of the plane’s cockpit voice recorder had been salvaged, which would represent a major boost to the investigation if data from the unit is recoverable.
The vessel that found the plane wreckage carries a remotely-operated vehicle which has high-resolution cameras that work at depths of up to 6,000 metres.
A race is now on to find the second “black box”, the flight data recorder containing all the commands made by the pilots. The so-called black boxes are expected to continue emitting signals until June 24, according to the aviation ministry. The black box is being sent to Alexandria, Egypt, where its contents will be analyzed.
It was not immediately known which parts of the plane had been found, nor whether the two flight recorders were nearby. Egypt’s investigation committee added earlier this week that radar images showed the plane swerved violently and changed direction, then turned 360 degrees before crashing.
But black boxes aren’t flawless.
The flight data recorder, which stores technical parameters on the flight, hasn’t been recovered yet.
The passengers on the plane were 30 Egyptians, 15 French citizens, two Iraqis, two Canadians, and citizens from Algeria, Belgium, Britain, Chad, Portugal, Saudi Arabia and Sudan.
Egypt’s aviation industry has been under global scrutiny since October 31, 2015, when a Russian Airbus A321 flying to St. Petersburg from the Red Sea resort of Sharm el-Sheikh crashed in the Sinai Peninsula, killing all 224 people aboard. They included a boy and two babies.
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After the crash, Egypt’s civil aviation minister Sherif Fathi said he believed terrorism was a more likely explanation than equipment failure or some other catastrophic event. Some have speculated that the plane was brought down from terrorist activity, although no known terrorist groups have come forward and claimed responsibility.
