The Latest: French firm gets signal from crashed Egypt plane

CAIRO – The Latest on the search for an EgyptAir plane that crashed last month, killing all 66 people on board (all times local):

6:15 p.m.

A French company says its equipment aboard a French naval ship has detected signals from one of the black box flight recorders on the EgyptAir flight that crashed into the Mediterranean Sea last month.

Alseamar said in a statement Wednesday that the Laplace ship started searching for the signals midday Tuesday, and “less than 24 hours were necessary … to locate signals from a detector attached to one of the recorders of flight MS804.”

The statement did not indicate how the company knows that the signals were from the EgyptAir black box. Officials at Alseamar could not be reached for further comment.

The French air accident investigation agency BEA said it’s impossible to determine from the signals whether it is the flight’s data or voice recorder.

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1 p.m.

Egypt says a French ship has picked up signals from deep under Mediterranean Sea, presumed to be from black boxes of the EgyptAir plane that crashed last month, killing all 66 passengers and crew on board.

The Civil Aviation Ministry is citing a statement from the committee investigating the crash as saying the vessel Laplace is the one that received the signals.

Wednesday’s statement says 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 search for the EgyptAir plane that crashed May 19 killing has narrowed to a 5-kilometre (3-mile) area in the Mediterranean.