French investigators have picked up signals from one of the flight recorders from the EgyptAir plane that crashed last month.
Locator pings from the ‘black boxes’ were detected by the French vessel Laplace which is combing the Mediterranean Sea for signs of the wreckage.
A spokesman from France’s Bureau of Investigations and Analysis said a priority search area has been established and a specialist vessel carrying robots able to dive to 3,000 metres is due to arrive next week.
However, as flight recorders are only able to send signals for up to 30 days after a crash, investigators have only a little over two weeks before they fall silent.
EgyptAir flight 804 was carrying 66 people, including one Briton, from Paris to Cairo when it disappeared from Greek air traffic controllers’ radar screens on May 19.
Some debris of the wreckage has been found 180 miles north of Egypt, but the bodies and the bulk of the aircraft are thought to have sunk.
