Second black box retrieved from crashed EgyptAir plane

The recorder was 'retrieved in several pieces', says statement

CAIRO: A search team has recovered the second flight data recorder from the EgyptAir plane that crashed last month in the Mediterranean, Egyptian investigators said Friday.

The recorder, which gathers information about the speed, altitude and direction of the plane, was "retrieved in several pieces", investigators said in a statement, a day after the aircraft's cockpit voice recorder was recovered.

The discovery was made a day after a search team 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.

Officials are preparing to transfer the recorder from a search vessel to the city of Alexandria on Egypt’s Mediterranean coast for analysis, a statement said.

The cockpit voice recorder keeps track of up to two hours of conversations and other sounds in the pilots’ cabin.

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.



The area where the plane crashed is believed to be about 3,000 metres (10,000 feet) deep and the black boxes should have had enough battery power to emit signals for four to five weeks.

The passengers on the plane were 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.