Investigators begin examining EgyptAir black boxes

Investigators have begun examining the black box flight recorders of an EgyptAir plane that crashed into the Mediterranean last month, hoping to establish the cause of the disaster, authorities say Sunday.

The Airbus A320 operating Flight MS804 from Paris to Cairo disappeared from radar screens between the Greek island of Crete and the north coast of Egypt on May 19. Sixty-six people were on board.

A vast search operation was launched, finding debris and pieces of the plane’s fuselage at the bottom of the Mediterranean, before the flight data recorder and cockpit voice recorder were recovered last week.

The Egypt-led investigative committee began examining the so-called black boxes on Saturday in the presence of representatives from France and the United States, where the engine was made, says Egypt’s civil aviation authority.

Both of the devices were damaged and had to be raised from the seabed in several stages, says the authority.

Their memory units were removed at the civil aviation ministry’s labs in Cairo and were undergoing testing, it says.

The data on them is to be unloaded, before it is analyzed in a procedure that is expected to last several weeks.

If badly damaged, the black boxes would be sent abroad for repairs, otherwise the work could be done in Egypt, the authority has said.

— AFP