Submarine Joins Hunt For EgyptAir Black Boxes

A submarine that can operate at a depth of 3,000m (10,000 ft) is being deployed in the hunt for the black boxes of a downed EgyptAir flight.

The vessel, which has been enlisted from Egypt's oil ministry, has been sent to search the seabed of the Mediterranean, Egypt's President said.

Flight MS804 came down at 2.45am local time on Thursday, south of the Greek island of Karpathos and north of the Egyptian coast.

It was carrying 66 passengers and crew from Paris to Cairo at the time and is suspected to have crashed into a part of the sea that is several thousand metres deep.

The plane's black boxes are yet to be found but emit a signal for four to five weeks after a crash in water.

Despite his officials previously saying terrorism was the most likely cause, Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al Sisi said: "All the theories are possible.

"There is no particular theory we can affirm right now."

Ships scouring the sea have already found body parts, personal belongings and wreckage from the Airbus 320.

The US Navy's Sixth Fleet said one of its patrol aircraft had seen more than 100 pieces of debris identified as having come from an aircraft.

They said the data was passed to the Egyptian Navy.

EgyptAir Holding Company chairman Safwat Moslem said the priority was finding the passengers' remains and the flight recorders.

"The families want the bodies. That is what concerns us. The army is working on this. This is what we are focusing on," he said.

It came as the first funerals of the victims took place.

Hundreds of family and friends of air stewardess Yara Hani Tawfik gathered at St Mary and St Athanasius Church in Cairo on Sunday morning.

Others attended a Coptic cathedral in Cairo to mourn two other victims, Medhat Tanious and Wagih Moris.

On Saturday, data showing trouble in the cockpit and smoke in a plane lavatory emerged.

It provided a window into the doomed jet's last three minutes before contact was lost, with multiple alarms going off, one after another.

Experts said the short time it took to descend 38,000ft into the sea indicated that a sudden, catastrophic event brought it down.

Aviation security expert Philip Baum said: "If they lost the aircraft within three minutes that's very, very quick. They were dealing with an extremely serious incident."

Several other nations, including the UK, are involved in the search of the Mediterranean.

The first available audio to have been released indicates there were no problems when the crew checked in with air traffic controllers in Zurich, Switzerland, late on Wednesday night.