EgyptAir voice recorder may verify fire before crash

Information extracted from the voice recorder aboard doomed EgyptAir Flight 804 indicates crew members attempted to douse a fire prior to the crash, multiple media outlets reported Tuesday.

Reuters reported the voice recorder supports information obtained from the Airbus 320's data recorder indicating smoke on the plane.

The Cairo-bound Airbus 320 crashed in the Mediterranean Sea on May 19, more than three hours after leaving Paris, killing all 66 people aboard. The black boxes were found and pulled from the sea a month later. The voice recorder was damaged in the crash but repaired by scientists in France before being returned to Egyptian investigators.

The recorders are crucial to the investigation because the cause of the crash remains a mystery. No group has claimed responsibility for bringing down the plane, and the crew issued no distress calls.

An automated system aboard the plane sent messages that smoke was detected in a lavatory, an avionics equipment area and elsewhere during the final minutes of the flight.

The bodies that had been mapped at the crash site, almost two miles deep in the sea, were recovered Sunday by a search vessel contracted by the Egyptian government. The Paris prosecutor's office last week opened an involuntary homicide inquiry into the crash but said at the time it was not a terrorism investigation.