A French ship specializing in underwater searches has arrived in the area of the eastern Mediterranean where Egyptair flight MS804 crashed last week, Egyptian officials said Friday.

    The vessel will join in the hunt for the Airbus A320's black boxes - the cockpit voice and data recorders - which are expected to provide evidence about what caused the plane to plunge into the sea, killing all on board. Some body parts and small pieces of debris have been recovered,dpa reported.

    The ship, named Laplace, is equipped with three detectors supplied by the French company Alseamar, France's civil aviation authority BEA said. It will scan four or five sites within a 5-kilometre area of the seabed, sources at the Egypt-led investigative committee said. 

    Discussions were taking place to include a deepwater robot in the search that is capable of operating at depths up to 3,000 metres, BEA said. On May 19, the Airbus A320 with 66 people on board vanished shortly after leaving Greek airspace en route from Paris to Cairo. 

    Searchers are racing against time to locate the two black boxes because the recorders' underwater locator beacons only transmit ping signals for about 30 days, the typical duration of their battery life.

Source : QNA