EgyptAir MS804: Damaged voice recorders to be sent to France for repair as data extraction fails

The damaged black boxes of the doomed EgyptAir flight MS804 that crashed into the Mediterranean Sea on 19 May 2016 will be sent to France for repairs, as investigators in Alexandria fail to extract information from its memory chips. Following repairs, the black boxes will then be returned to Egyptian authorities, according to reports on Thursday (23 June).

Investigators are hoping that the data from the memory chips of the black boxes will prove vital in revealing the actual cause of the crash. All the 66 people on board the flight from Paris to Cairo were killed after the plane crashed went off radar over the eastern Mediterranean and crashed.

The Egyptian investigating committee said on Thursday (23 June) that the two recorders– the CVR (cockpit voice recorder) and FDR (flight data recorder) – will be flown to the France-headquartered Bureau of Enquiry and Analysis for Civil Aviation Safety (BEA) next week where experts will work on extracting data and remove salt deposits from them.

The committee also added that French experts would join in its efforts to retrieve human remains from the sea. Earlier, remains of the doomed flight were recovered some 290km (180 miles) north of the Egyptian port city of Alexandria.

The plane had gone off radar without sending any distress call. Meanwhile, a specialist vessel is continuing its search to locate the plane's wreckage, the BBC reported.