A French naval supply vessel picked up a signal from one of the two recorders on 1 June, and Egypt has chartered a second vessel operated by Mauritius-based Deep Ocean Search, equipped with sonar equipment and an underwater vehicle.
Remi Jouty, director of the BEA air accident agency, which is advising Egypt on the underwater search, said the first ship continued to pick up locator signals from the first recorder, whose location had been narrowed to within 1 to 2 kilometres.
Pending the search for the two recorders, the Egyptian-led investigation is still “very far” from understanding why Flight 804 crashed into the Mediterranean on 19 May, killing all 66 people on board, Jouty told aviation journalists in Paris.
Each recorder, one containing cockpit voice recordings and the other data from the Airbus A320 jet, is attached to a beacon designed to emit acoustic homing signals for 30 days, giving search teams limited time to detect the second box.
