Ship tasked with searching for doomed EgyptAir flight black boxes delayed

Monday 06-06-2016 02:02 PM

Handout photo released by Egypt's military on May 22, 2016 shows debris of the EgyptAir jet that plunged into the Mediterranean Sea on May 19, 2016.

CAIRO, June 6 (Aswat Masriya) - Arrival of the ship, tasked with searching for and recovering the two black boxes of the doomed EgyptAir MS804 flight, to the search site will be delayed, sources within the committee investigating the incident said on Monday.

The ship JOHN LETHBRIGDE, owned by Mauritius-based Deep Ocean Search company, will arrive on Thursday, said the sources.

Egypt's civil aviation ministry said on the first of June that it was destined to arrive at the search location within one week.

The sources attributed the delay to sea state and high currents the ship encountered on its way to the location.

The black boxes, flight data and cockpit voice recorder, of the doomed plane are designed to emit signals for 30 days after a crash, detectable from underwater.

The EgyptAir flight which was carrying 66 people on board including 30 Egyptians and 15 French nationals crashed on May 19 en route from Paris to Cairo.

The flight disappeared off the radar as it was crossing the Mediterranean about 280 km from the Egyptian seacoast at 02:30 am Cairo local time, about 45 minutes before its scheduled arrival at Cairo airport.

Egypt and France signed deals with two French companies last month namely Deep Ocean Search and Alseamar, both specializing in marine wreckage searches.  

Last week, Egypt's aviation ministry said that the French vessel "Laplace", participating in the search for the black boxes, received through its search equipment" signals from the seabed of the wreckage search area; assumed to be from one of the data recorders."

The ministry added that "extensive search efforts are being carried out to locate the two data recorders in preparation for their retrieval by JOHN LETHBRIDGE".

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