PARIS, June 9 (Reuters) – A second ship outfitted with specialist search gadgets will be a part of the hunt for the “black box” flight recorders and the wreckage of an EgyptAir jet on Friday, the pinnacle of France’s air-accident investigation company mentioned on Thursday.

A French naval provide vessel picked up a sign from one of many two recorders on June 1 and Egypt has chartered a second vessel operated by Mauritius-based Deep Ocean Search, outfitted with sonar tools and an underwater automobile.

Remi Jouty, director of the BEA air accident company, which is advising Egypt on the underwater search, mentioned the primary ship continued to choose up locator indicators from the primary recorder, whose location had been narrowed to inside 1 to 2 kilometers.

Pending the seek for the 2 recorders, the Egyptian-led investigation continues to be “very far” from understanding why Flight 804 crashed into the Mediterranean on May 19, killing all 66 folks on board, Jouty informed aviation journalists in Paris.

Each recorder, one containing cockpit voice recordings and the opposite knowledge from the Airbus A320 jet, is hooked up to a beacon designed to emit acoustic homing indicators for 30 days, giving search groups restricted time to detect the second field.

Jouty mentioned he was sorry that French suggestions to increase the battery life to 90 days, first made in December 2009 following the Atlantic crash of an Air France jet and nonetheless not carried out worldwide, had taken so lengthy to be acted on. The new guidelines take impact in 2018.

Each recorder is contained inside a powerful bright-orange housing and hooked up to a beacon, or pinger, which sends out acoustic indicators about as soon as a second after a crash.

To get well the black packing containers from the seabed 3,000 meters beneath the floor, investigators might want to slender the indicators to inside a number of meters and set up whether or not the pingers are nonetheless linked to the recorders, Jouty mentioned.

How lengthy it takes after that to get well the essential items of proof will rely partly on whether or not they’re accessible or trapped contained in the plane’s construction, he informed Reuters.

“It is difficult to imagine the recovery taking less than a week once they are located,” he added.

Once recovered, the recorders can be handed to Egyptian authorities, who’re anticipated to learn them within the nation’s air crash investigation laboratory in Cairo.

If they’re broken they may very well be despatched overseas for additional evaluation or again to their U.S. producer, Honeywell.

Egyptian investigators mentioned in an announcement they’d additionally acquired radar knowledge from Egyptian air protection that would assist clarify what occurred within the airplane’s closing minutes.

The Greek protection minister has mentioned Greek radar confirmed the airplane swerved sharply and plunged from cruising altitude to fifteen,000 ft earlier than disappearing from the radar.

Egypt’s air navigation chief has informed Reuters the airplane was not seen swerving however disappeared from the radar abruptly at 37,000 ft. (Reporting by Tim Hepher in Paris and Lin Noueihed in Cairo; Editing by Larry King and Gareth Jones)

(c) Copyright Thomson Reuters 2016.