Breakthrough in EgyptAir plane crash, 2nd black box found

In a breakthrough, searchers today located and retrieved the second black box of the crashed EgyptAir plane a day after recovery of the cockpit voice recorder of the aircraft which plunged into the Mediterranean last month killing all 66 on board.

The flight data recorder was recovered by the vessel ‘John Lethbridge’, according to a statement by the Egyptian committee that probed the crash of the Airbus A320 plane.

Yesterday, the cockpit voice recorder for EgyptAir Flight 804 was found in a damaged condition, an Egyptian investigative committee said after the the wreckage of the ill-fated plane was recovered on Wednesday.

“The device was damaged and the retrieval process was conducted in several stages,” the Egyptian committee that investigated the crash said in a statement. The statement added that the vessel, which joined the search team last week, succeeded in pulling out the memory unit which is the most important part in the recorder although it (the recorder) was damaged.

The vessel which was contracted by the government to join the search for the two black boxes found and obtained images from the wreckage of the plane. EgyptAir flight MS804 from Paris to Cairo carrying 66 people, including crew, crashed into the Mediterranean Sea about 280 kms from the Egyptian seacoast on May 19 with 56 passengers and 10 cabin crew on board.

The passengers included 15 French, 30 Egyptians, a British, a Belgian, two Iraqis, a Kuwaiti, a Saudi, a Sudanese, a Chadian, a Portuguese, an Algerian and a Canadian.

A deep-sea robot has also located pieces of the missing EgyptAir plane at the bottom of the Mediterranean. While the wreckage discovered could offer clues about why the plane went down, Airbus said the flight recorders held the key to unlocking the mystery.

Some wreckage had been pulled out of the sea by search teams last month, along with belongings of passengers. The “pings” emitted by the black boxes were detected on June 1 but the flight recorders’ exact location has not yet been established.