France sending search ship to find EgyptAir black box

Investigation into crash that killed 66 continues; Laplace vessel's detectors designed to find underwater flight recorders

By AP 27 May 2016, 3:16 am
The French navy's Lapérouse class hydrographic survey vessel Borda, one of France's three Lapérouse class vessels. The other two are the Lapérouse and the Laplace. (Wikipedia/Marine nationale/CC BY-SA 3.0)

PARIS — A French naval ship specializing in underwater searches will help search for the black box flight recorders of the EgyptAir flight that crashed in the Mediterranean last week killing all 66 aboard.

The French air accident investigation agency, the BEA, said in a statement that the Laplace ship left Thursday from Corsica for the zone of the crash with two BEA investigators aboard.

The Laplace is equipped with three detectors made by the Alseamar company designed to detect and localize signals from the flight recorders, believed about 3,000 meters (9,800 feet) underwater.

France may also send an unmanned submarine and deep-sea retrieval equipment.

US Navy Lt. JG Dylon Porlas uses binoculars to look through the window of a US Navy Lockheed P-3C Orion patrol aircraft from Sigonella, Sicily on May 22, 2016, as part of the search for EgyptAir flight 804 that went missing on May 19. (AP Photo/Salvatore Cavalli)

The BEA is involved in the search because the crashed plane was an Airbus, manufactured in France. The cause of the crash, on a Paris-Cairo flight, is unclear.

Copyright 2016 The Associated Press.

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