Second black box recovered from EgyptAir crash site

Search teams on Friday recovered the
second flight recorder of an EgyptAir
plane from the bottom of the
Mediterranean that could prove vital
in establishing the cause of the
unexplained crash.
Flight MS804 from Paris to Cairo
disappeared from radar screens in the
eastern Mediterranean last month
with 66 people on board, and a vast
search operation has since scoured
swathes of sea off Egypt’s northern
coast.
Egyptian investigators said search
teams managed to recover the Airbus
A320’s flight data recorder – which
gathers information about the speed,
altitude and direction of the plane – a
day after they retrieved its cockpit
voice recorder.
The data recorder, which experts
termed “the most important part” of
the probe, was found in several pieces,
according to investigators.
It was not immediately clear how
much of its data would be useable, but
Cairo’s civil aviation authority said on
Thursday that salvage experts had
managed to retrieve the voice
recorder’s crucial memory unit
despite extensive damage to the black
box.
The voice recorder was due to be
transferred from the port city of
Alexandria to Cairo, where Egyptian
investigators supported by French
experts and representatives of
manufacturer Airbus will analyse its
contents.
France’s BEA air safety agency said
Friday it had dispatched an expert to
Cairo to assist the probe.
The cockpit voice recorder keeps track
of up to two hours of conversation and
other sounds in the pilots’ cabin, but
also ambient noise within the aircraft.
“Depending on what we can get from
this black box, it could allow us to
know exactly what happened,”
according to aeronautics expert Jean
Serrat.
An Egyptian aviation ministry source,
who declined to be named, said that if
the voice data was heavily damaged, it
could be sent abroad for further
analysis.
Investigators have repeatedly said it is
too soon to determine what caused the
disaster, but a terror attack has not
been ruled out.