EgyptAir Flight 990 ‘Black Box’ Retrieved

The “black box” flight data recorder from EgyptAir Flight 990 was retrieved from the ocean floor Tuesday and sent to laboratories in Washington, where the device could provide the first real clues about what caused the mysterious crash that killed all 217 people aboard the jumbo jet.

“We know that the recorder was damaged,” National Transportation Safety Board Chairman Jim Hall said Tuesday morning. “We do not know if that damage will in any manner affect the quality of the information we expect to recover.”

Late Tuesday afternoon, the board announced it had begun to extract data from the recorder.

The flight data recorder logs more than 55 technical aspects of the flight, including altitude, airspeed, engine performance, instrument readings and the positions of flight controls.

Its retrieval raised hopes that the Navy would soon find the plane’s other black box--the cockpit voice recorder--which retains the sounds of all noises in the cockpit during the last 30 minutes of flight.

“In any investigation, most information comes from the recorders,” Hall said. “They can save several steps in the investigative process.”

Thus far, the cause of the Oct. 31 crash--possibly mechanical failure, pilot error, air turbulence, a bomb or a violent takeover--has been a matter of speculation.

Radar data show the plane dived from 33,000 feet to 16,000 feet, climbed again to 24,000 feet and then dived again, apparently breaking up before plunging into the sea about 60 miles south of Nantucket Island. The pilots did not radio any distress calls before the crash.

Hall said Tuesday’s recovery was made while Deep Drone, one of two remote-controlled submarines that the Navy has been using to search for the boxes, was working on the ocean floor in water about 260 feet deep. Deep Drone was zeroing in on “pings” emitted by the recorders’ emergency locater transmitters.

About 5 a.m., as Deep Drone was using its two robotic arms to dig through mud and crash debris on the ocean floor, one of its cameras spotted the flight data recorder, Hall said.

By 5:40 a.m., the flight data recorder had been brought to the surface. To keep its environment as stable as possible, investigators placed the device in a seawater-filled container before flying it to Washington by helicopter.

There, NTSB lab specialists removed the digital recorder from its dented steel case and began tests to see whether--and if so, how severely--the recordings themselves had been damaged. In the past, NTSB technicians have shown remarkable perseverance and ingenuity in recovering information from recorders that appeared to have been damaged beyond all hope.

The flight data recorder from Flight 990 logs its information digitally. Under even ideal circumstances, retrieving the data is a complex process, and investigators say it could be several days before they know just what they have.

As the lab work progressed in Washington on Tuesday, the Navy continued efforts to find and retrieve Flight 990’s cockpit voice recorder, which was believed to be in the same general area where the flight data recorder was found.

Both recorders were equipped with working locater pingers, but the pinger from the flight data recorder was found a few feet from the device itself. Investigators say the cockpit voice recorder’s pinger may also have broken off in the impact of the crash and could be some distance from the box.

The other remote-controlled submarine being used in the search, the more heavily armored Magnum, was damaged and temporarily out of action when the flight data recorder was recovered.

Officials said the umbilical cord through which Magnum is controlled from the surface was damaged during recovery operations late Monday, and the submarine had to be hauled to the surface for repairs.

Magnum is guided from a contract ship, the Carolyn Chouest, equipped with multiple thrusters that can keep it precisely positioned during heavy seas. Deep Drone is controlled from the Grapple, a Navy recovery ship that uses conventional anchors to stay on position.

The weather is expected to be good for the next few days, and both ships should be able to work without difficulty. But if seas rise--as they did off and on last week and over the weekend--it is the Magnum and the Carolyn Chouest that will remain on the job.