A naval vessel has detected the location of one of the two recorders of the doomed EgyptAir flight that plunged into the Mediterranean in May, sources from the Egypt-led investigative committee said Thursday.
The French vessel John Lethbridge “has detected the location of one of the plane’s black boxes,” the sources said.
The committee had said in a statement yesterday that the main locations of the flight’s wreckage have been found.
Egypt’s flag-carrier airline announced on May 19 that its flight MS804, which had 66 people on board, vanished off the radar 16 km (10 miles) into Egyptian airspace as it was crossing the Mediterranean Sea at 2:45 AM Cairo time en route from Paris to Cairo.
Authorities have been searching for the jet’s wreckage and its so-called black boxes, pieces of equipment that record details about a flight and are believed to be key to pinpointing the cause of a crash. The two black boxes are designed to continue emitting acoustic signals for around 30 days after the crash.
Two French ships, John Lethbridge and Laplace, are hunting for the two flight recorders because Egypt’s Ministry of Civil Aviation had contracted their owner, the Mauritius-based company Deep Ocean Search.
The investigation committee announced on Jun. 1 that Laplace detected signals from one of the two recorders.
Today, “preparations are underway” for recovering the plane’s wreckage and the black box that has been detected by one of the two vessels, sources from the investigation committee said.
The investigation team on board the vessel have created a map showing locations of wreckage pieces, which have been detected in several places in the Mediterranean.
Egyptian, Greek and U.S. naval vessels were collaborating in the search for the flight’s wreckage and black boxes, but sources from the investigation committee said today that they have left the location, and only Deep Ocean Search’s two French ships remain now.
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Credit: All Africa
