Mohammadi News Agency News – Features – Photo
MNA International Desk: Egyptian investigators said they have marked wreckage of the cabin of lost Egypt Air flight MS804. The plane crashed last month in the Mediterranean Sea, and investigators dreaded signals from its black boxes would decease soon.
The Egyptian committee exploring the plane’s disappearance said on Wednesday it had covered pieces of the plane cabin in some places, a finding that might help bring a determination to the month-long question of why the plane stopped.
In an announcement, the investigation committee confirmed that the John Lethbridge, one of two ships contracted by the Egyptians to quest for the wreckage had found ‘several main locations’ on the sea floor between Crete and the Egyptian coast.
A second ship, the LaPlace, detected signals from MS804’s black box on 1 June, fuelling confidences that investigators will find what caused the plane to crash. But the black box is only expected to emit signals for a further nine days.
Both the LaPlace and the John Lethbridge have been combing the sea off the Egyptian coast, searching for the wreckage in an area of the Mediterranean an estimated 10,000 feet deep.
Investigators now plot to draw a map presentation the locations of the plane parts. Earlier this month, they said they had detected signals from the plane’s data recorders, which are predicted to expire next week.
So far, only body parts have been retrieved from the wreckage, which have been DNA tested in order to identify the victims, according to a statement by the Egyptian government on 24 May.
France’s aviation safety agency, BEA, has stated that the aircraft had transmitted messages showing smoke inside the cabin and a fault in a flight control unit before crashing. Egypt’s investigation committee added earlier this week that radar images showed the plane swerved violently and changed direction then turned 360 degrees before crashing.
The crash killed all 66 passengers and crew. These included 30 Egyptians, 15 French citizens, two Canadians, two Iraqis and people from Belgium, Britain, Algeria, Chad, Saudi Arabia, Sudan and Portugal.
No group has claimed the crash as a terror attack. Egypt’s aviation minister, Sherif Fathi, told a news conference that he did not want to draw any conclusions prematurely, but “the possibility of having a different action or a terror attack, is higher than the possibility of having a technical failure”.
