Second black box from crashed EgyptAir flight MS804 repaired

Crashed EgyptAir flight MS804's cockpit voice recorder, the aircraft's second black box, has been successfully repaired, Egyptian officials announced in a statement Saturday.

The flight data recorder, the other black box, has already revealed that smoke alarms went off in the plane’s bathrooms and in the area below the cockpit, suggesting that a fire broke out on board. Investigators have also stated that the hull of the plane has shown signs of heat damage.

Flight MS804 crashed into the Mediterranean Sea as it was flying to Cairo from Paris on May 19, killing all 66 passengers and crew on board.

Both black boxes suffered damage during the crash and were transported to France to recover data they contained.

French investigators repaired parts of the cockpit voice recorder and discovered that the memory unit was intact. Egyptian investigators stated that information from the voice recorder will be extracted after it is returned to Egypt, the Wall Street Journal reported Saturday.

French prosecutors have opened a legal investigation into the crash. The prosecutor’s office has stated that it is not investigating the crash as a terrorist act as of yet.

The black boxes were located by an international team in the eastern Mediterranean seabed on June 16 and 17, and were first to sent to a team of Egyptian investigators before they were shipped to France for repairs.

The contents will now be analyzed by Egypt’s Civil Aviation Ministry, with the ministry stating that it may take several weeks to analyze the data.

The reasons behind the fatal crash remain unknown. The repaired voice recorder, however, contains the last two hours of conversation between the crew in the cockpit, which officials say will be crucial in determining the causes of the crash.