Second EgyptAir black box recovered
June 17, 2016
An Egypt-led investigative committee on Friday said a search team recovered the second flight data recorder from EgyptAir flight MS804.
The black box was "retrieved in several pieces," the investigators noted in a statement released a day after the aircraft's cockpit recorder was retrieved, and two days after the wreckage was located.
A specialized underwater search vessel operated by Mauritius-based Deep Sea Search collected a fragment of the box containing the memory unit, considered the "most important" part of the device, the committee added.
The Airbus A320 disappeared from radar on May 19 shortly after entering Egyptian airspace.
An international search team later found debris from the aircraft, prompting authorities to conclude the plane crashed, killing all 66 people on board - 56 passengers, seven crew members and three security personnel.
"Depending on what we can get from this black box, it could allow us to know exactly what happened," aeronautics expert Jean Serrat said.
The voice recorder is expected to be transferred from Alexandria to Cairo, where a team of local and international aviation experts supported by the manufacturer Airbus will analyze its contents.
Unknown cause
Authorities have not ruled out technical failure or terrorism as the reason behind the crash.
Civil Aviation Minister Sherif Faty in May suggested that it was more likely to have been caused by a terrorist attack than technical issues.
"The situation may indicate that the likelihood of a terrorist work is far higher than the likelihood that the plane developed a technical failure," he said.
In the past year, Egypt has witnessed a series of aviation crises. In March, a man hijacked a domestic Cairo-bound EgyptAir flight and forced the pilot to divert the aircraft to Cyprus. The man claimed to have a suicide belt strapped to his body.
In October, a Russian passenger flight departing from the Red Sea resort town of Sharm el-Sheikh to St. Petersburg was downed over the Sinai Peninsula, killing all 224 people on board. The self-declared "Islamic State" militant group's Sinai affiliate claimed responsibility for the tragedy.
No group has claimed responsibility for downing EgyptAir flight MS804.
ls/msh (AFP, AP, dpa)