EgyptAir Flight 804 Black Box Recovered, Investigators Say
Egypt officials say the cockpit voice recorder’s memory unit was retrieved
The crew of the specialized vessel, the John Lethbridge’s, which located and recovered the cockpit voice recorder. PHOTO: F. BASSEMAYOUSSE/DOS LTD/EUROPEAN PRESSPHOTO AGENCY
Searchers recovered the cockpit voice recorder from EgyptAir Flight 804,
Egyptian officials said Thursday, putting investigators closer to figuring out
why the plane crashed into the Mediterranean Sea last month.
A specialized vessel, the John Lethbridge, belonging to Deep Ocean Search Ltd.,
was able to locate and recover the cockpit voice recorder, one of the plane’s black
boxes. The device was damaged, but the memory unit that retains two hours of
conversations from the cockpit was retrieved, Egyptian officials said.
Once the cockpit voice recorder is at a specialized facility where the information
can be extracted, investigators could gather important information about what
happened during the flight in a matter of days if not hours, safety experts said.
Egyptian officials said they planned to move the recovered memory unit from
the ship to the Egyptian coastal town of Alexandria. The flight data recorder,
which stores technical parameters on the flight, hasn’t been recovered yet.
The breakthrough comes a day after the ship provided the first images of Flight
804 wreckage to investigators. Flight 804 crashed May 19, killing all 66 passengers
and crew. The plane was flying from Paris to Cairo before it deviated from its course
while cruising at 37,000 feet, first turning left before rolling to the right and
completing a full circle, investigators said this week.
The Airbus Group SE A320 broadcast a number of fault messages before all
contact was lost, indicating possible smoke in the nose of the plane, including a
critical electronic-equipment hub beneath the cockpit. The messages alone haven’t
proved sufficient to determine a likely cause for the crash, investigators have said.
Radar data also indicated there wasn’t a sudden explosion that tore the plane apart
midair.
The uncertainty over what happened added urgency to recovering the plane’s black
boxes. The beacons on the black boxes are required to last for 30 days, though they
can remain active for longer.
Egyptian officials will try to extract information from the cockpit voice recorder.
Egypt has invested heavily to upgrade its ability to extract such information, safety
experts said, though its skills aren’t as well tested as those by the BEA, the French
air accident organization that is aiding the probe. The U.S. National Transportation
Safety Board, which has been invited to join the investigation by Egyptian officials,
also has extensive experience reading black boxes.
Black box-maker Honeywell International Inc. has been asked by Egypt to provide
technical assistance related to the recorder.
Before the device was recovered, the head of the U.S. National Transportation
Safety Board said it wasn’t clear how involved his agency would be in the
EgyptAir investigation. NTSB Chairman Christopher Hart said on Wednesday
that U.S. investigators, who were invited in to help analyze engine issues, were
still uncertain whether engine performance would become a significant element
of the continuing probe.
The cockpit voice recorder could allow investigators to determine if pilots were
battling onboard smoke or even a fire or were fighting other technical problems.
It could also give clues about whether hostile action was involved in bringing down
the plane, something Egyptian officials haven’t ruled out.
At the very least, downloading the recorder’s digital memory ought to provide clues
about how the pilots reacted to the series of alerts about problems with cockpit
windows andsmoke alarms in the nose of the plane, including inside a lavatory
and an important electrical hub.
A more detailed assessment may require access to the flight data recorder, air
safety experts said, to properly assess what actions pilots may have taken or to
determine what if any systems failed. The full assessment could take weeks.
Radar and other data suggest that, after automated-warning systems initially
indicated an emergency on board, the jet flew on for at least a couple of minutes
without any distress call or other radio communication from the cockpit. The
sequence of events suggests the pilots may not have been controlling the plane
that entire time, according to air-safety experts and veteran crash investigators.
The steep angle of the wings and the sharpness of the left turn, according to
some of these experts, could have exceeded computer-controlled flight protections
that stay in effect under normal circumstances. Based on publicly available
flight-tracking data, the turn appears to have come close to, or even exceeded,
the jet’s structural design limits, one former investigator said.
If that was the case, the plane’s autopilot and other computer-aided flight systems
likely would have shut off abruptly, possibly leaving the plane flying too slowly
to maintain adequate lift and avoid an aerodynamic stall, according to a number
of safety experts not involved in the probe.
Recovering quickly from such a drastic maneuver by manually flying the jet,
particularly in darkness with warning systems sounding incessant alerts on the
flight deck, would pose a huge challenge for any crew. The information from the
cockpit voice recorder should help shed light on whether crew faced such adverse
conditions.