เครื่องบินตกแอร์บัส A320 ชนเข้ากับทCAIRO: Investigators into EgyptAir's plane crash need at least 12 days to recover its black boxes as they await a ship that can retrieve them from the bottom of the Mediterranean, investigation sources said on Sunday. The Airbus A320 plane crashed into the Mediterranean with 66 people on board during a May 19 flight from Paris to Cairo, after disappearing from radar screens Investigators are in a race against time to find the flight recorders, known as the black boxes, which have enough battery power to emit signals for four or five weeks. The recordings could help investiga- tors determine the reason for the crash. The plane was carrying passengers from different nationalities, with 40 Egyptians including the crew and 15 French nationals. Egypt's aviation minister had initially said a terrorist attack was more likely to have brought down the plane, but a tech- nical failure is also possible. France's aviation safety agency has said the aircraft transmitted automated
messages indicating smoke in the cabin and a fault in the flight control unit min utes before losing contact. Egypt and France have signed agree- ments with two French companies spe- cialising in deep water searches, Alsea mar and Deep Ocean Search(DOS) "Those two companies have comple- mentary roles: The first is for locating the pings of the black boxes[the signal being emitted by the black boxes' beacon] while the second is for diving and recov- ering them" with the help of a robot, a source close to the investigation said in Cairo, requesting anonymity. "But the Dos specialised ship left the Irish sea on Saturday and it will reach the perceived crash site only in around 12 days, after having the Egyptian and French investigators embark in Alexan- dria," the source added. The investigation into the crash is led by an Egyptian-headed committee. Other sources close to the investiga- tion confirmed the information. The investigators are searching for the flight recorders at a depth of around
3,000m, some 290km north of the Egyp tian coast. Three of Alseamar's Detector 6000 acoustic detection systems, which sub- merged can detect pings for up to 4,000 to 5,000m below sea level, left the French island of Corsica for the crash site on Thursday onboard Laplace, a French navy ship. It will arrive at the perceived crash site on"Sunday, or Monday at the latest" according to one of the sources. "While we are waiting for the DOS ship, equipped for detecting the pings in deep waters but, more importantly, the robots capable of descending up to 6,000m to recover the black boxes, we will not be wasting time as Leplace will be trying to locate them in the meantime, said one of the sources. The source added that after 12 days, "there is a very good chance ofrecoverin the flight recordings thanks to the combi nation of these two French companies' Two members of the French avia- tion safety agency BEA are on board Leplace. AFP