Possible underwater signal from EgyptAir flight detected
Cairo (CNN) A French naval vessel has detected an underwater
signal that could have originated from one of the so-called black boxes of
missing EgyptAir Flight 804, according to the Egyptian investigative committee.
Specialized locator equipment on board the French vessel La
Place has detected a signal from the seabed in the search area in the
Mediterranean Sea, the committee said in a statement.
The signal is "assumed to be from one of the data
recorders."
La Place is part of the team of vessels involved in
intensive search operations to find the flight data and cockpit voice recorders
from the Airbus A320 aircraft. The recorders could reveal evidence about what
caused the crash.
Flight 804 crashed May 19 in the Mediterranean en route from
Paris to Cairo.
Authorities hope to recover the data recorders, so a
specialized vessel managed by the Deep Ocean Search company can then retrieve
them. That vessel is set to join the search team within a week, the
investigative committee said.
It isn't the first time investigators have said they
detected a signal from the plane.
Last week a lead investigator in the search said airplane
manufacturer Airbus had detected signals from the plane's Emergency Locator
Transmitter, a device that can manually or automatically activate at impact and
will usually send a distress signal.
The signals gave investigators a more specific location to
detect pings from the black boxes, state media reported.
The data records have been fixtures on commercial flights
around the world for decades.
The flight data recorder gathers 25 hours of technical data
from the airplane's sensors, recording several thousand distinct pieces of
information. Among the details investigators could uncover: information about
the plane's air speed, altitude, engine performance and wing positions.
The cockpit voice recorder captures sounds on the flight
deck that can include conversations between pilots, warning alarms from the
aircraft and background noise. By listening to the ambient sounds in a cockpit
before a crash, experts can determine if a stall took place and the speed at
which the plane was traveling.
But black boxes aren't perfect. In several cases -- such as
the 1996 crash of TWA Flight 800 or the crash of American Airlines Flight 77 on
September 11, 2001 -- authorities had hoped to find clues in the recorders,
only to discover that the data inside had been damaged or the recordings had
stopped suddenly.
-CNN-
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