EgyptAir flight MS804 black box has been located, reports suggest
Update: EgyptAir MS804 latest – forensic official says crash was caused by "explosion"
Reports suggest that the black box which will likely reveal what caused the missing EgyptAir flight MS804 to crash has been found.
An Egyptian government source told CBS news search crews have located the plane's data recorders, commonly known as the black box.
Separate reports said there were failures in the plane's control system, as well as smoke alerts in a toilet and its electronics system minutes before the crash, according to data from an automatic system called the Aircraft Communications Addressing and Reporting System.
A screen grab of this data, published by aviation journal AVHerald.com, shows short messages such as "SMOKE LAVATORY SMOKE," "AVIONICS SMOKE" and "F/CTRL SEC 3 FAULT."
Read more: EgyptAir confirms it has found wreckage in search for missing flight MS804
Egypt said yesterday that its navy had found human remains, wreckage and the personal belongings of passengers. But there's still no sign of the main wreckage.
"The Egyptian navy was able to retrieve more debris from the plane, some of the passengers' belongings, human remains, and plane seats," the Civil Aviation Ministry said in a statement.
While there were suspicions it could be a terror attack by Islamist militants who blew up another airliner over Egypt last year, no one has yet claimed responsibility for the EgyptAir flight that went missing with 56 passengers and 10 crew on board.
EgyptAir Chairman Safwat Moslem told state television that the radius of the search zone was 40 miles, giving an area of 5,000 square miles, but may be expanded.
A European satellite spotted a 2 km-long oil slick in the Mediterranean, about 40 km southeast of the aircraft's last known position, the European Space Agency said.
The plane vanished just as it moved from Greek to Egyptian airspace control. Greece said it had swerved radically and plunged from 37,000 feet to 15,000 before disappearing from radar screens.
Read more: Terrorism can't be ruled out after EgyptAir flight crashed into Med
The Cairo bound plane had taken off from Paris at 11.09pm local time on Thursday. It was due to land at Cairo shortly after 3am local time. The pilot had 2,766 flying hours; the aircraft was manufactured in 2003 and had routine maintenance checks carried out in Cairo on Wednesday.
In March, an Egyptair plane bound for Cairo was hijacked and diverted to Cyprus. All hostages were later released unharmed.
And last October a Russian plane flying from Sharm el-Sheikh crashed killing 224 passengers.