Robot, divers to search sea
2004-01-05 18:19
Sharm El-Sheikh, Egypt - French experts taking part in the search for a crashed Egyptian charter plane on Monday got Egyptian approval to deploy divers, a submarine robot and a patrol plane, French officials said.
A team of 16 divers wearing green military fatigues arrived at the main commercial port in the Red Sea resort at Sharm el-Sheikh following a truck full of sophisticated equipment, including the robot, an AFP reporter said.
"Our task is to search for debris and bodies in depths up to 35m," the head diver, Lieutenant Frederic Pastre, told AFP.
He added that the propeller-driven submarine was in one of the boxes in the truck.
Navy Commander Axel Moracchini, the head of France's underwater recovery operations, told AFP earlier that the robot will be used once the black box flight recorders were found.
First, he said, sensing rods would be placed in the water to try to pick up signals emitted by the recorders, which might contain clues as to how the crash occurred.
"Once we have located the wreck and the black boxes, we can deploy the submarine robot," Moracchini said.
He added that the area being checked was about ten square kilometers, suggesting that the Egyptians were not as close to finding the wreck as a French official had reported earlier.
"Based on the first Egyptian indications, the wreck has just about been located," the French official said on condition he not be named.
The official added that the main portion of the plane appeared to be in about 400m of water rather than in the deeper chasms of the region, which can drop to 1nbsp;000m.
The wire-guided robot would be operated from a team on the surface, which would receive images from the sea depths. The team could also operate its mechanical claw to tie a line around the black boxes or other objects to be retrieved.
French officials said the robot was 80cm long, 60cm high and 60cm wide.
The Egyptians have also given permission for the French to use an Atlantique-2 maritime patrol plane which will be used to guide search vessels toward wreckage and bodies using radars and cameras, French officials said.
The Atlantique-2 arrived here on Sunday, officials said.
French officials also awaited the arrival overnight on Monday of a radar-equipped frigate and a tanker. Some 300 sailors were on the frigate and another 135 on the tanker.