Conclusions on what caused EgyptAir flight MS804 to suddenly crash in the Mediterranean last month remain on hold as Egypt’s initial attempts to retrieve data from the black boxes belonging to the plane have failed.
According to a statement by Egypt’s Ministry of Civil Aviation on June 23, damage to the memory units of both boxes—the Cockpit Voice Recorder and the Flight Data Recorder, made it so investigators could not read the data.
The committee now plans to send the boxes to France for repairs and “removal of salt accumulations.” After that, the boxes will be returned to Egypt for another round of testing.
An EgyptAir Airbus A320 with the registration SU-GCC taking off from Vienna International Airport, Austria, on August 21, 2015. AP Photo/Thomas Ranner, File
