Human Remains Recovered from EgyptAir Site

A search vessel contracted by the Egyptian government has recovered all previously mapped human remains under water at the crash site of EgyptAir flight MS804, Egypt's aircraft accident investigation committee said on Sunday.

The John Lethbridge, belonging to Mauritius-based Deep Ocean Search, headed to Alexandria port to hand over the remains to coroners and prosecution officials, the committee said in a statement.

The ship will return to the crash site to make further checks for any possible remains there, the statement said.

Flight 804 crashed into the Mediterranean on May 19, killing all 66 people on board. 

The pilots didn’t call for help. The plane’s maintenance system reported clues during the final minutes of the flight including smoke in the plane’s avionics and lavatory and temperature changes in the cockpit windows.

Two flight recorders were retrieved from the site last month. Investigators have started analysing one of its flight recorders and are extracting information from the other.

Debris from the jet was brought to Cairo airport last week, where investigators will try to reassemble part of the frame to help establish what might have caused the disaster.

No explanation for the disaster has been ruled out. But current and former aviation officials increasingly believe the reason lies in the aircraft's technical systems, rather than sabotage.

Initial analysis of the plane's flight data recorder showed there had been smoke in the lavatory and avionics bay while recovered wreckage from the jet's front section showed signs of high temperature damage and soot, the first physical signs that fire may have broken out on the airliner.

The Paris prosecutor's office opened a manslaughter investigation on Monday but said it was not looking into terrorism as a possible cause of the crash at this stage.