Black Boxes From EgyptAir Jet Are Going to France for Repair
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Version 0 of 1. CAIRO — After days of unsuccessfully laboring to revive the flight recorders of the EgyptAir jetliner that crashed in the Mediterranean last month, Egyptian investigators said on Thursday that they would send the damaged devices to France for repairs next week. The flight data and cockpit voice recorders of Flight 804 will be flown to the French aviation accident investigation bureau near Paris, the investigators said in a statement. The French bureau will try to restore the devices by, among other things, removing accumulated salt, the statement added. Once information can be retrieved, the boxes would be flown back to Cairo for analysis. The Airbus A320 mysteriously plunged from 37,000 feet into the Mediterranean on May 19 on a flight from Paris to Cairo, killing all 66 passengers and crew members on board. Egyptian officials have repeatedly suggested that the disaster was most likely the result of terrorism, though no group has claimed responsibility for it. In a statement this month, Egyptian investigators said they would send the black boxes abroad if the damage they sustained in the crash proved to be too severe. The recorders were found last week along with some wreckage from the aircraft scattered along the seabed. After it was pulled out of the water, the cockpit voice recorder looked “crushed,” an Egyptian aviation official said at the time. If restored, the memory units of the black boxes should provide investigators with details about the aircraft’s navigation systems, engines and the pilots’ conversations during the flight. |