Information is being slowly recovered from the damaged black boxes of EgyptAir flight 804, which crashed on May 19.
The black boxes, one of which contained a flight data recorder and the other a cockpit recorder, were recovered nearly two weeks ago after a month long search and rescue mission. The cockpit recorder had been damaged in the crash, and had been sent to France for information recovery. Once it is in working order, it will be handed over to Egyptian officials for analysis.
Officials have been able to garner some information from the flight data recorder, though, while the world waits for the cockpit recorder to be fixed. According to the Independent, the first error message (in a long stream of error messages) was sent at 2:26 a.m. and read: “ANTI ICE R WINDOW," which indicated a problem with the heater for the co-pilots' window. Six more messages were sent over the next three minutes; two mentioned an issue with the window sensor, while the other two mentioned smoke. One of the sensors that detected smoke was in a toilet behind the flight deck, and the other was in the avionics bay beneath the cockpit.
The final two messages were sent within seconds of each other. The first indicated an issue with the autopilot, and the second indicated a fault in the flight control system.
Four minutes later, the plane gave one last broadcast, alerting Cairo of its location before crashing into the Mediterranean Sea.
The recovered messages back up findings at the crash sight that pointed to fire damage and the indications that the plane broke up mid-flight.
On Monday, French officials opened up a manslaughter inquiry, but said there is no hard evidence indicating that an act of terrorism caused the crash. While Egyptian officials perviously suggested that the most likely cause of the crash was terrorist activity, they have recently taken a softer tone, saying that all scenarios still remain on the table.
Many of the details are still unclear, and the cause of the crash is still far from known. Hopefully, the information that will be gleaned from the voice recorder will help clear away some of the smoke and finally give answers to the families of the victims and government officials alike.