Egypt says it has found plane wreckage

It was not immediately known which parts of the plane had been found, nor whether the two flight recorders were nearby. They contain vital information, including any conversations inside the cockpit just before the May 19 crash of Flight MS804, which killed all 66 on board.

The airplane had taken off from Paris and while in the air headed to Cairo it disappeared from radar.

Searchers spotted the wreckage of EgyptAir Flight 804, which plunged into the Mediterranean Sea with 66 people onboard almost one month ago, Egyptian authorities announced Wednesday.

A statement from Egyptian officials said “several main locations of the wreckage” have been identified. It says that a second ship, John Lethbridge affiliated with the Deep Ocean Search firm, will join the search team later this week. Searchers plan to map the wreckage’s distribution on the seabed.

Finding a cause for the crash is important because the A320 is a workhorse of the fleet, with 6,700 flying worldwide.

A French navy vessel equipped with deep-water listening devices has detected signals from one of the black boxes of the EgyptAir plane that crashed in the Mediterranean, investigators said earlier this month. No group has claimed an attack after the incident. Flight data revealed that smoke detectors went off in the toilet and the aircraft’s electrics, minutes before the plane’s signal was lost.