Sigls detected in Mediterranean

EgyptAir crash

Cairo, May 27: Airbus has detected sigls from the Mediterranean Sea where the EgyptAir flight 804 crashed last week, media reports said. The sigls were emitted by the plane’s emergency locator transmitter, a device that can manually or automatically activate at impact and will usually send a distress sigl, CNN reported on Thursday. The sigls from the emergency locator transmitter are different from the pings emitted by the “black boxes”.

Having these sigls rrows down the area that the multitiol search team has been focusing on — which a few days ago was described as “about the size of Connecticut”. It dramatically decreases the search area to a 5-km radius, giving investigators a more specific location to detect pings from the black boxes.

The plane left Paris at on the night of May 18 and was scheduled to arrive in the Egyptian capital soon at 3.15 a.m on May 19. It disappeared from the radar screens at 2.30 a.m.

On board the plane were 56 passengers, seven crew members and three security personnel. A French vessel, equipped with special detection equipment to locate the pings, will begin an underwater search for the wreckage “in the coming days”, according to the BEA, France’s accident investigation agency. So far, some debris from the plane — including life vests, persol belongings and parts of wreckage — has been recovered. (IANS)