French Vessel Detects EgyptAir Recorder Signals

A French search vessel has picked up signals from one of the flight recorders of EgyptAir flight MS804, Egyptian and French investigators said.

Search teams are working to recover the two flight recorders that will offer vital information about the fate of the plane that crashed en route from Paris to Cairo on May 19 killing all 66 people on board.

Without the recorders there is not enough information to determine what went wrong or whether the plane was brought down deliberately.

The recorders are designed to emit acoustic signals for 30 days after a crash, giving search teams fewer than three weeks to spot them in waters up to 10,000 feet (3,000 m) deep, which is on the edge of their range.

The Egyptian investigation committee said on Wednesday that the search was intensifying ahead of the arrival of another vessel, the John Lethbridge, from Mauritius-based company Deep Ocean Search to help retrieve the devices. That ship is expected to arrive within a week, it said.

"Search equipment aboard French naval vessel Laplace… has detected signals from the seabed of the search area, which likely belong to one of the data boxes," the Egyptian committee said in its statement.

France's aviation accident bureau BEA confirmed that the signal had come from one of the recorders.

The Laplace has equipment from ALSEAMAR which can pick up pinger signals over long distances up to 5 km (3 miles) and was contracted by the Egyptian investigators last week.

Egyptian investigators have said that the EgyptAir plane did not show any technical problems before taking off and the pilot made no distress call to air traffic control.

There has been no claim of responsibility for the crash.

The jet transmitted a series of messages in the minutes before it crashed showing a rise in temperature at the co-pilot's window and smoke on board, but investigators say these shed little light on the cause.

There are also conflicting reports of the plane's last moments as it crossed from Greek to Egyptian airspace.