Crashed EgyptAir plane's data recorder repaired

The damaged flight data recorder from the EgyptAir flight MS804 that crashed in May has been successfully repaired in France, Egyptian investigators said.

The French aircraft investigation bureau was able to fix the electronic board of the data recorder, Egypt's Civil Aviation Ministry announced on Monday.

The ill-fated plane, from Paris to Cairo plunged into the Mediterranean Sea on May 19, killing all 66 people on board.

Final repairs on the cockpit voice recorder are expected to wrap up as early as Tuesday, CNN reported citing the ministry as saying.

Both devices were damaged by the crash impact and sea water, officials said.

Egyptian investigators sent the mangled memory chips of the black boxes to a technical team in France last week.

Officials ran a battery of tests, including electric testing on the data units to gauge if the chips are "readable."

The black boxes were recovered in the Mediterranean Sea by the crew of the John Lethbridge, a privately owned deep-sea survey and recovery vehicle contracted by Egypt's government to aid in the search.

Amid speculation ranging from mechanical failure to terrorism, investigators are looking to extract any bytes of the data to find the critical evidence needed to reveal what caused the crash.

The cockpit voice recorder captures sounds from the flight deck, including flight crew conversation and alarms and background noise that can help investigators understand what the flight crew was doing at the time of a crash.

The flight data recorder gathers 25 hours of technical data from the airplane's sensors, recording several thousand distinct pieces of information, including air speed, altitude, engine performance and wing positions.

--IANS

ksk