EgyptAir Plane: Black Box Recovered from Crash Site

Local Editor

A search team on Thursday recovered the cockpit voice recorder from the EgyptAir plane that crashed into the Mediterranean last month in a major step towards establishing the cause of the tragedy.

The device was found broken into pieces but the salvage experts managed to retrieve the recorder's crucial memory unit, Egypt's civil aviation authority said.

Meanwhile, officials are preparing to transfer the recorder from a search vessel in the Mediterranean to Egypt for analysis, a statement said.

The breakthrough came hours after a deep-sea robot located pieces of the main body of the plane at the bottom of the Mediterranean.

For its part, Airbus said the flight recorders held the key to unlocking the mystery of why the plane went down with 66 people on board en route from Paris to Cairo nearly a month ago.

"Only the black boxes could contribute to a full understanding of the chain of events which led to this tragic accident," an Airbus statement said.

In parallel, investigators said it is too soon to determine what caused flight MS804 from Paris to Cairo to crash on May 19, although a terror attack has not been ruled out.

Relatively, some wreckage had already been pulled out of the Mediterranean by search teams last month, along with belongings of passengers.

Source: Mews Agencies, Edited by website team