Black box of crashed EgyptAir plane found

The black box of the EgyptAir plane which crashed last month killing all 66 on board, was recovered on Thursday from the Mediterranean, a breakthrough towards finding the cause of the tragedy.

The vessel ‘John Lethbridge’ that is affiliated to the company Deep Ocean Search found the cockpit voice recorder of the Airbus A320, according to a statement by the Egyptian committee that investigated the crash of plane.

The statement added that vessel, which joined the search team last week, succeeded in pulling out from the Mediterranean Sea, the memory unit which is the most important part in the recorded although it (the recorder) was damaged.

The vessel which was contracted by the government to join the search for the two black boxes has found and obtained on Wednesday images from the wreckage of the EgyptAir plane.

EgyptAir flight MS804 from Paris to Cairo carrying 66 people, including crew, crashed into the Mediterranean Sea about 280 km from the Egyptian seacoast on May 19 with 56 passengers and 10 cabin crew on board.

The passengers included 15 French, 30 Egyptians, a British, a Belgian, two Iraqis, a Kuwaiti, a Saudi, a Sudanese, a Chadian, a Portuguese, an Algerian and a Canadian.

A deep-sea robot has also located pieces of the missing EgyptAir plane at the bottom of the Mediterranean.

While the wreckage discovered could offer clues about why the plane went down, Airbus said the flight recorders held the key to unlocking the mystery.

Some wreckage had been pulled out of the sea by search teams last month, along with belongings of passengers.

The ‘pings’ emitted by the black boxes were detected on June 1 but the flight recorders’ exact location has not yet been established.

IMAGE: An EgyptAir plane scheduled to make a flight from Paris to Cairo taxies on the tarmac at Charles de Gaulle airport in Paris. Photograph: Christian Hartmann/Reuters