On Friday, the Egyptian investigation committee announced that search teams had found the flight data recorder from the wreckage of EgyptAir Flight 804. Both were brought to Cairo for analysis.
Advertisement
If intact, the cockpit recorder should reveal pilot conversations and any cockpit alarms, as well as other clues such as engine noise. The flight was headed from Paris to Cairo when it disappeared from radar.
The Islamic State group claimed responsibility for that attack within hours, but there has been no such claim linked to the EgyptAir crash.
Officials believe Flight MS804 crashed in the Mediterranean almost a month ago en route from Paris to Cairo, with 66 people on board. Radar data showed the aircraft had been cruising normally in clear skies before it turned 90 degrees left, then a full 360 degrees to the right as it plummeted from 38,000 feet to 15,000 feet. The wreckage was believed to be at a depth of about 3,000 meters (9,800 feet). The two recorders could aid investigators in understanding what caused the plane, an Airbus A320, to crash into the Mediterranean Sea.
Authorities have not ruled out technical failure or terrorism as the reason behind the crash.
“Finding answers to our many questions will give us some relief”, said Malek Zayada, a Sudanese living in Cairo.
Meanwhile, the Egyptian Civil Aviation Ministry has started unloading the memory unit of the cockpit voice recorder, the first black box retrieved on Thursday, sources on the investigative committee said. The device was damaged, but searchers were able to recover the memory unit from it, the committee said.
Earlier this month, search teams said signals from one of the “black box” flight recorders had been detected.
Some debris from the plane – including life vests, passenger belongings and pieces of wreckage – have already been found. Crash experts say it may provide only limited insight into what caused the crash, especially if the crew was confused or unable to diagnose any faults.
Safety onboard Egyptian aircraft and at the country’s airports have been under close worldwide scrutiny since a Russian airliner crashed in the Sinai Peninsula in October, killing all 224 people on board, shortly after taking off from a Red Sea resort in Egypt.
The voice recorder is expected to be transferred from Alexandria to Cairo, where a team of local and global aviation experts supported by the manufacturer Airbus will analyze its contents.
Two specialist vessels – Laplace and John Lethbridge – have been carrying out deep water searches for wreckage of the jet. The signals helped narrow the search to a 5-kilometer (3-mile) area. Based on publicly available flight-tracking data, the turn appears to have come close to, or even exceeded, the jet’s structural design limits, one former investigator said.
Advertisement
“Sometimes it takes up to two years to understand what happened”, he said.
