EgyptAir plane crash: Search vessel recovers bodies of victims

Cairo: A search vessel looking for the remains of victims of the EgyptAir plane that crashed into the Mediterranean in May has recovered all of the mapped bodies from the sea floor, investigators said on Monday. [caption id=“attachment_2872704” align=“alignleft” width=“380”] Representational image. Reuters[/caption] The Mauritian-based ship John Lethbridge is now sailing to Alexandria in Egypt, BBC reported. It will later return to the crash site to look for more bodies. The flight from Paris to Cairo crashed on 19 May, killing all 66 people on board. The cause of the crash remains yet not known. A statement by the Egyptian Aircraft Accident Investigation Committee said that the search vessel John Lethbridge “retrieved all the human remains that were mapped at the crash location”. The remains are due to be examined by prosecutors and forensic specialists in Alexandria before going to Cairo for DNA analysis. The committee said on Saturday that the memory chips from the airliner’s black box voice recorders are not damaged and investigators should be able to make use of them. The black box confirmed that smoke was on board, Egyptian investigators said last week. Automated electronic messages sent by the plane revealed that smoke detectors went off in a toilet and in the avionics area below the cockpit, minutes before the plane disappeared. The recorded data are consistent with those messages, investigators said.