Companies to help Egypt search for black boxes

Safwat Masalam, the chief of EgyptAir, said Wednesday that Egypt contracted two companies, one French and one Italian, to help locate data recorders from Flight 804, which crashed into the Mediterranean Sea with 66 people aboard last week.

The black boxes could give clues as to what happened in the final moments of the flight. The recorders, which are actually orange, emit “pings” that can be detected with sonar and have batteries that last about 30 days. After that, the search would become much more difficult in water about 2 miles deep.

The contracted companies were not identified, the Associated Press reported.

Egyptian military forces have found debris, including body parts, from the missing jet 180 miles from the Egyptian coastal city of Alexandria. Photographs released by the Egyptian army show bits of debris, tattered clothing and a life vest, among other objects. Most of the passengers’ remains and large sections of the jet had not been located.

Nobody claimed responsibility for the incident. In contrast, the Islamic State quickly took credit for destroying Russian Metrojet Flight 9268, which blew up over Egypt’s Sinai in October after taking off from the resort town of Sharm el-Sheik.

Egyptian Civil Aviation Minister Sherif Fathi said after the jet crashed that a terror attack was more likely responsible than a technical malfunction, but he had no evidence on which to base that statement. Egypt said no one survived the crash.