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The black box of Egypt Air Flight 804 is finally in the hands of Egyptian authorities after almost a month of searching and recovery attempts.
Egypt Air Flight 804 unexpectedly crashed en route to Cairo from Paris on May 19, killing all 66 passengers. The causes of the crash is still unknown but the recovery of the black box will hopefully shed some much needed light on the last moments before the crash.
The black box contains voice recordings from the last half hour of the flight and will be able to hopefully explain what caused the plane to start wildly careening and then to plummet from 38,000 feet while smoke was detected in the lavatory.
Although the signals from the black box were picked up two weeks ago, it was discovered that the box was buried beneath 13,000 feet of water and could not be immediately retrieved. Running out of time, with a little less than two weeks until the battery died and the data was forever lost, a coalition of ships and planes from Egypt, Greece, France, the United States, and other countries, were finally able to retrieve the box from the depths of the Mediterranean Sea.
To the dismay of the recovery crews, the black box had been damaged, but the “memory unit,” which is the most important part of the recorder, was still intact. Experts say that it will take about 48 hours to retrieve the data from the recorder, although it could take longer if the “memory unit” was damaged along with the rest of the box.
The voice recorder will hopefully be able to provide more information about the cause of the fatal crash. Some have speculated that the plane was brought down from terrorist activity, although no known terrorist groups have come forward and claimed responsibility. Others have said that the plane crashed due to purely mechanical error, although the plane was in perfect shape before it took off.
Either option is quite alarming to the Egyptian government who finally have the ability to answer the questions that have been plaguing them sense the plane first went down. It is about time that the case is closed and that the grieving families can finally understand what happened to their loved ones on that day.