The second black box from a crashed EgyptAir plane has reportedly been found in the Mediterranean Sea, reports The Independent.
Egyptian investigators said a specialist vessel had recovered it from the aircraft’s wreckage, where it had been found tucked into the plane’s tail.
A statement said the John Lethbridge, a ship contracted by the Egyptian government, managed to “successfully retrieve” the memory unit but did not give details of its condition.
The flight data recorder is hoped to provide vital clues to investigators attempting to establish what caused the aircraft to crash on its journey from Paris to Cairo, killing all 66 people on board.
Experts have already started analysing the cockpit voice recorder, which arrived in Egypt after being recovered on Thursday.
The EgyptAir Airbus A320 disappeared between the Greek island of Crete and the Egyptian coast on May 19th, with the cause of the disaster still unknown.
Automatic messages sent in the minutes before the plane disappeared from radar appeared to indicate smoke on board, as well as problems with the cockpit windows, autopilot and the flight control system.
Egypt’s civil aviation minister initially said he believed terrorism was a more likely explanation than equipment failure but so far no hard evidence has emerged and no group has claimed responsibility.
A forensics official said body parts retrieved were small and pointed to a possible explosion on board, but the head of Egypt’s forensics authority dismissed it as “mere assumptions”.