The "electronic boards" of the recorders are being flown next week to the offices of the French aviation accident investigation bureau near Paris, authorities said.

The French air accident authority BEA will conduct the repairs, after which the committee will bring the devices back to Cairo to carry out data analysis at the labs of the Egyptian Civil Aviation Ministry.

"Due to the damage in the memory units of the cockpit voice recorder and the flight data recorder of the plane, which resulted in a discrepancy in the readings, ... the committee will take the electronic circuit boards to France for repair and removal of the saline sediments on both devices," a statement from the Egypt-led investigative committee said on Thursday.

Egyptair flight MS804 was en route from Paris to Cairo when it crashed on May 19 into the Mediterranean, 290 kilometers off the Egyptian coast, killing all 66 people on board.

A ship contracted by the Egyptian government that is affiliated with Mauritius-based Deep Search Ocean will continue lifting flight wreckage from the Mediterranean.

The recorders were made by US company Honeywell. The plane, an A320, is made by Airbus, which is based in France.

Radar data showed the aircraft had made violent moves after cruising normally in clear skies, plummeting from 38,000 feet (11,582 meters) to 15,000 feet. It disappeared when it was at an altitude of about 10,000 feet.

Egypt's civil aviation minister, Sherif Fathi, has said that terrorism is a more probable cause than equipment failure or a similar catastrophic event.

jbh/bk (dpa, AP)