Update: On June 17, 2016, the EgyptAir Flight 804’s second black box—the flight data recorder, was also retrieved. The two recorders have now been handed over to an investigation committee to undergo analysis as investigators hope to figure out the cause of the crash.
The cockpit voice recorder, part of the black box from the doomed EgyptAir Flight 804, has been recovered from the bottom of the Mediterranean Sea, Egypt’s investigation committee announced Thursday.
The committee said that although the recorder was destroyed, the vessel searching for the wreckage managed to pull out the “memory unit, which is the most important in the recorder,” according to Daily News Egypt.
The announcement comes a day after a vessel contracted by the government found the first remnants of wreckage from the plane. Images of the wreckage were also obtained for the first time and investigators will now draw a map of the wreckage’s distribution sites.
The black box was found only 8 days before the black box’s signals will expire—on June 24. The other part of the two boxes—the flight data recorder—has yet to be found.
The EgyptAir flight crashed into the Mediterranean Sea on May 19, killing all 66 members on board. What caused the plane to crash is still uncertain, so investigators hope the black box will provide some insight. A technical fault and terrorist attack have both been raised as possible explanations.
