NEWPORT, R.I. -- The Navy recovered the cockpit voice recorder from EgyptAir Flight 990 Saturday, the head of the National Transportation Safety Board said.
NTSB chairman James Hall said the cockpit voice recorder was recovered at 10:12 p.m. Saturday. He said it was found in the midst of wreckage deep in the Atlantic Ocean and that its "pinger" was detached from the box."I am very relieved," Hall said.
Investigators were hoping the voice recorder would provide answers to questions raised by information gleaned from the flight data recorder, which was retrieved on Tuesday.
The flight data and cockpit voice recorders -- the so-called black boxes -- could tell investigators what doomed the Boeing 767 that crashed Oct. 31 in the ocean off the Massachusetts island of Nantucket, killing all 217 people aboard.
Experienced pilots are mystified by flight recorder data they say shows that EgyptAir Flight 990 was deliberately put into a dive, saying whatever was done in the cockpit was not a standard emergency measure.
One veteran former 767 pilot said the actions indicated by the tape were consistent with what someone in the cockpit would do if they deliberately wanted to crash the plane.
Another, Barry Schiff, a former TWA 767 pilot from Los Angeles and currently an aviation accident investigator, said the data shows that some human factor was responsible rather than some system failure.
"I racked my brain, and I can't think of any emergency that would lead to these maneuvers," said Schiff.