CAIRO, June 23 -- The black box recorders of crashed EgyptAir flight MS804 that have recently been picked up from the Mediterranean will be sent next week to France for repairs due to their damage, the Egyptian Aircraft Accident Investigation Committee said in a statement Thursday.
The committee said that due the damage of the cockpit voice recorder (CVR) and the flight data recorder (FDR), it will take them to France next week "to repair them and remove the salt sediment from the two devices at the labs of the French investigation office and then take them back to Cairo to perform data analysis at the labs of the Egyptian Ministry of Civil Aviation," the statement pointed out.
EgyptAir Flight MS804, an Airbus A320, went missing from radar screens on May 19 en route from Paris to Cairo with 66 people on board, including 30 Egyptians and 15 French.
Later on, the Egyptian military said it found some personal belongings of the victims and small pieces of the plane wreckage in the Mediterranean Sea 290 km north of the coastal city of Alexandria.
Last week, the investigation committee said the hired vessel, Lethbridge John, located several spots of the wreckage of the doomed plane in the Mediterranean, noting it was provided by the first images of the wreckage from one of the spotted sites.
A day later, the committee said the vessel found the crashed jet's CVR yet it was damaged.
"The vessel Lethbridge John hired by the Egyptian government continues picking up the debris of the plane and locating the body remains of the victims," the committee said in Thursday's statement, noting a team of French forensic experts will join an Egyptian one to take part in lifting the body remains.
Investigation into the tragic fall of EgyptAir Flight MS804 still continues with all theories on the table, including a terrorist bomb and a severe technical failure, yet without a strong clue for any.
