EgyptAir Flight 804: Wreckage From Airbus A320 Found In Mediterranean, Egyptian Investigators Say

Egyptian officials said Wednesday that search teams have found the wreckage of EgyptAir Flight 804, which crashed into the Mediterranean Sea on May 19, killing all 66 people on board, the BBC reported.

Egyptian authorities said in a statement obtained by the Telegraph that a vessel hired by the Egyptian government "had identified several main locations of the wreckage, accordingly the first images of the wreckage were provided to the investigation committee." Investigators are hoping to recover the black box flight recorder to help determine the cause of the crash.

The Airbus SE A320 aircraft was flying from Cairo to Paris when it suddenly turned off course to the left at 37,000 feet, before making a sharp turn to the right and completing a full circle, investigators said in a report Monday.

Debris from the wreckage, luggage and body parts were found about 180 miles off the coast of Alexandria, Egypt, where the search for the aircraft’s black box has been centered.

The cause of the crash remains unknown, but officials have not ruled out a terror attack. Radar data suggests there was no midair explosion. Investigators determined that several smoke alerts near the cockpit were triggered shortly before the crash.

In October, Metrojet Flight 9268 bound for Saint Petersburg, Russia, disintegrated over Egypt's Sinai Peninsula shortly after taking off from the popular Egyptian tourist resort city of Sharm El Sheikh. Egyptian President Abdel-Fattah el-Sisi acknowledged nearly four months later that the Metrojet plane carrying 224 people, mostly Russian tourists, crashed as a result of terrorism. Russian authorities believe about two pounds of TNT detonated during the flight.