Egypt sends submarine to crash site of MS804

Egypt has sent a submarine to the Mediterranean to search for EgyptAir Flight MS804’s missing black boxes.

Egypt yesterday sent a submarine to the Mediterranean crash site of EgyptAir Flight MS804 to search for the Airbus A320’s missing black boxes.

President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi said last night the submarine from the Oil Ministry had the ­capacity to operate at a depth of 3000m below the surface.

A French patrol boat carrying equipment capable of tracing the black boxes was expected in the search area between the Greek ­islands and the Egyptian coast today. But experts have warned the equipment could be useless if the black boxes — which can emit signals up to five weeks — have sunk to a depth of more than 2000m.

Making his first public ­comments since the Thursday crash of the Airbus A320 while en route from Paris to Cairo, Mr Sisi said the submarine left yesterday to join the search for the cockpit voice and flight data recorders, commonly known as black boxes.

“This moved today in the ­direction of the plane crash because we are working hard to retrieve the ... black boxes,” he said.

Egypt’s Civil Aviation Minister had said terrorism was more likely than technical failure, but Mr Sisi said in a televised address that “all the theories are possible”.

“There is no particular theory we can affirm right now,” he said.

Mr Sisi said it “will take time” to determine the cause of the crash, which killed all 66 ­people on board.

He thanked the nations that have joined Egyptian navy ships and aircraft in the search for the wreckage.

In the early hours of Thursday MS804 plummeted and turned full circle before vanishing from radar screens, without its crew sending a distress signal.

France’s aviation safety ­agency said MS804 had transmitted automated messages indicating smoke in the cabin as the disaster unfolded.

Egyptian Foreign Minister Sameh Shoukry said the search — which has already yielded ­“pieces of the aircraft, body parts, belongings of the deceased” — would continue until the black boxes were found. Asked about the reported smoke, he said: “It is ­certainly an important element in the jigsaw puzzle.”

The disaster comes seven months after the bombing of a Russian airliner over Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula that killed all 224 people on board. Islamic State claimed responsibility for that ­attack, but there has been no such claim for the EgyptAir crash.

AP, AFP