Flight recorder from crashed EgyptAir flight has been found

EGYPTIAN authorities have confirmed signals detected by a ship in the Mediterranean are from the black boxes of the EgyptAir flight which went missing last month. Doomed flight MS804 crashed killing all 66 people aboard when it vanished from radar on the morning of May 19.

The plane was heading from Paris to Cairo when it made violent swerves and fell into a “death spiral” over the Med.

Bodies of the tragic passengers and crew, which included 40-year-old British dad Richard Osman, are to be identified using relatives DNA after the horror crash left them unidentifiable.

The Civil Aviation Ministry has to day reported the French vessel Leplace has picked up the signals.

Investigators working in deep water close to Greece said the noises were almost certainly from the Airbus A320

Locator pings emitted by flight data and cockpit voice recorders, known as the black boxes, can be picked up from deep underwater.

Black boxes are designed to emit acoustic signals for 30 days after a crash.

Egypt’s aviation minister had initially said a terrorist attack possibly brought down the plane, but a technical failure is also likely.

France’s aviation safety agency has said the aircraft transmitted automated messages indicating smoke in the cabin and a fault in the flight control unit minutes before losing contact.

The investigators are searching for the black boxes at a depth of about 10,000ft, some 180 miles north of the Egyptian coast with the area recently narrowed to a 3 mile area.

Egyptian civil aviation minister Sherif Fathi has said he believes terrorism is a more likely explanation than equipment failure or some other catastrophic event.

But no hard evidence has emerged pointing to the cause, and no militant group has claimed to have downed the jet.

Earlier, leaked flight data indicated a sensor detected smoke in a lavatory and a fault in two of the plane’s cockpit windows in the final moments of the flight.

It did not say when the signals were detected but the French Navy confirmed the Laplace arrived on Tuesday in the search area.

Laplace’s equipment picked up the “signals from the seabed of the wreckage search area, assumed to be from one of the data recorders,” the statement read.

It added that a second ship, John Lethbridge affiliated with the Deep Ocean Search firm, will join the search team later this week.

Locator pings emitted by flight data and cockpit voice recorders, known as the black boxes, can be picked up from deep underwater.

The Airbus A320 had been cruising normally in clear skies on a nighttime flight to from Paris to Cairo early on May 19 when it suddenly lurched left, then right, spinning all the way around and plummeting 38,000 feet (11,582.4 meters) into the sea.

A distress signal was never issued, EgyptAir has said.

We pay for your stories! Do you have a story for The Sun Online news team? Email us at tips@the-sun.co.uk or call 0207 782 4368.