Posted on 01/16/2004 2:50:06 PM PST by blam
Egyptian jet's black box found on seabed
French search teams have located one of the black boxes from a crashed Egyptian plane and are working on lifting it from the Red Sea floor.
Shaker Qilada, chief of the Egyptian investigation committee, said it was not yet known whether the box was the voice or data recorder.
"The box will be handed over to the Sharm el-Sheik port authorities on Saturday," Qilada told reporters.
He said the box would immediately treated with chemicals to remove any salt build-up so that the data inside would not be damaged.
Egyptian and French officials have called the crash an accident but investigators want to get the information from the black boxes to be sure.
The Flash Airlines charter plane plunged into the sea on January 3 shortly after take-off from the Sinai resort town of Sharm el-Sheik, killing all 148 people on board, including 134 French tourists returning to Paris.
French teams working with the Scorpio 2000 submarine on loan from France Telecom have been focusing on finding the black boxes, while Egyptian teams are collecting any debris that floats to the surface.
On Thursday, a French mini-submarine relayed images of the debris of the Boeing 737 aeroplane but could not locate the black boxes.
Another small French submarine, Super Achille, arrived Thursday and began dives in the crash area.
Days after the crash, search teams managed to pick up signals from the flight recorders but did not have the equipment to retrieve them from 600 to 800-metre depths.
Story filed: 21:16 Friday 16th January 2004
Where's Moses when you need him?
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