CAIRO // A French navy vessel equipped with deepwater listening devices has detected signals from one of the black boxes of the EgyptAir plane that crashed in the Mediterranean, investigators said on Wednesday.
The flight recorders could contain crucial information to help solve the mystery of why the Airbus A320 plunged into the sea with 66 people on board en route from Paris to Cairo on May 19.
But it is expected to be at least another week before the black boxes can be recovered from the seabed by an underwater robot.
The signals were picked up by French survey ship Laplace which is using acoustic detection systems to listen for the “pings” emitted by the flight recorders, said France’s aviation safety agency, BEA.
“The detection of this signal is a first step,” said BEA official Remi Jouty.
Egypt’s ministry of civil aviation had announced the potential breakthrough earlier, saying the signals were “assumed to be from one of the data recorders”.
Some of the wreckage has already been pulled from the Mediterranean along with human remains and the belongings of passengers on board the jet. No survivors have yet been found.
Another vessel sent by Deep Ocean Search, a private company hired to help find the black boxes, is on its way to the area with a robot capable of diving up to 3,000 metres to retrieve the recorders.
It is due to arrive at the site within a week.
“Extensive search efforts are being carried out to locate the two data recorders in preparation for their retrieval,” Egypt’s civil aviation ministry said.
The black boxes have enough battery power to emit signals for four or five weeks.
The sea is believed to be around 3,000 metres deep in the search area, which is located around 290 kilometres north of the Egyptian coast, according to a source close to the investigation.
The French navy surveillance vessel Laplace, which detected the signals, is equipped with three devices capable of picking up the “pings” from the black boxes from a distance of up to five kilometres.
Investigators have said it is too soon to determine what caused the disaster although a terror attack has not been ruled out.
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 disappearing from radar screens.
Investigators were able to narrow down the search site thanks to an emergency signal sent via satellite by the plane’s locator transmitter when it hit the Mediterranean last week.
Two BEA investigators are on board the Laplace while three others are in Cairo along with an Airbus expert to help the investigation, according to the French government.
The passengers of flight MS804 included 30 Egyptians, 15 French citizens, two Iraqis, two Canadians, and citizens from Algeria, Belgium, Britain, Chad, Portugal, Saudi Arabia and Sudan. They included a boy and two babies.
Seven crew and three security personnel were also on board the plane.
* Agence France-Presse
