The voice recorder from EgyptAir Flight 990 could lead to a breakthrough within days in establishing why the Boeing 767 plunged into the Atlantic, killing all 217 people aboard, investigators said yesterday.
"We're certainly hopeful that within the next two or three days we'll be able to answer a lot of the puzzling questions that information on the flight data recorder has raised in our minds," the US National Transportation and Safety Board chairman, Mr Jim Hall, said yesterday.
Mr Hall spoke after the navy's robot, Deep Drone, plucked the damaged voice recorder from a pile of wreckage on the ocean floor some 78 metres down.
The Cairo-bound Boeing 767 crashed into the Atlantic about 60 miles off the coast of Nantucket Island on October 31st, just 30 minutes after take-off from JFK Airport, New York.
Mr Hall has asked EgyptAir to supply "someone who knew the pilots, who flew with the pilots" to listen to the 30-minute voice recorder tape and help to not just translate the Arabic, but also interpret the nuances of tone, timbre and tension in the crew's voices.
NTSB analysis of the data showed the plane's automatic pilot was turned off and the engines were powered back at the beginning of the steep dive that created weightlessness in the cabin.
During the 40s0]-pitch descent, the plane exceeded its approved operating speed of .86 Mach - Mach 1 is the speed of sound or about 700 m.p.h. - and an emergency siren and flashing red light were set off.
In Cairo, the former head of the EgyptAir's committee in charge of accident investigation suggested the flight had been sabotaged.
"[Investigators] have said that the plane's engines were switched off," said Mr Essam Ahmed. "But if that had happened the plane would have fallen steadily. Why should the plane fall in such a manner?" he asked.
"I think that someone managed to place something near the cockpit, which has a toilet behind it," he added, suggesting an explosion may have been responsible for the disaster.