EgyptAir plane crash: 'Black Box' signals heard in the Mediterranean

A major search mission was launched after the flight crashed in the Mediterranean
EPA
Peter Allen1 June 2016

Signals from the presumed ‘black box’ flight recorders of the EgyptAir jet that crashed on route from Paris to Cairo were today picked up in the Mediterranean.

French investigators working in deep water close to Greece said the noises were almost certainly from the Airbus A320, which crashed on 19 May, killing 66 people.

The jet’s flight recorders, or ‘black boxes’, are designed to emit acoustic signals for 30 days after a crash.

This gives search teams less than five weeks to pinpoint the sound in waters up to 3,000 metres deep.

Search teams are accordingly involved in a race against time to find MS804’s black boxes before they run out of power.

AP, the international news agency, said sources on a French ship involved in the operation had reported picking up the signals.

The recordings could help investigators determine the reason for the crash. The plane was carrying one British passenger, along with 40 Egyptians including the crew and 15 French nationals.

Egypt’s aviation minister had initially said a terrorist attack possibly brought down the plane, but a technical failure is also likely.

France’s aviation safety agency has said the aircraft transmitted automated messages indicating smoke in the cabin and a fault in the flight control unit minutes before losing contact.

Egypt and France have signed agreements with two French companies specialising in deep water searches, Alseamar and Deep Ocean Search (DOS).

The investigators are searching for the black boxes at a depth of about 10,000ft, some 180 miles north of the Egyptian coast.

Three of Alseamar’s DETECTOR-6000 acoustic detection systems, which submerged can detect pings for up to 4,000 to 5,000 metres below sea level, left the French island of Corsica to the crash site onboard Laplace, a French Navy ship.

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