CAIRO, Jun 24 (Aswat Masriya)- Egypt will send the two black boxes of the doomed EgyptAir flight MS804 to France to be repaired next week, the Egyptian committee tasked with investigating the crash said on Thursday.

The EgyptAir flight which was carrying 66 people on board crashed on May 19 en route from Paris to Cairo.

The flight lost contact with radar as it was crossing the Mediterranean about 280 km from the Egyptian seacoast at 02:30 am Cairo local time, about 45 minutes before its scheduled arrival at Cairo airport.

In a statement, the investigation committee said the memory units of the two black boxes, the Cockpit Voice Recorder and the Flight Data Recorder, are damaged " which led to incompatibility of tests readings with the approved standards of the recorders manufacturer". Accordingly the boxes will be escorted to France for repair and removal of salt accumulations at the French Investigation Bureau and will be sent back to Cairo to perform data analysis at the labs of Egypt's Ministry of Civil Aviation.

The black boxes are vital for concluding the cause of a crash.

Following the crash, Egypt has contracted with Mauritius -based company "Deep Ocean Search", specializing in marine wreckage searches, to help in the search and retrieval of the boxes and the plane's wreckage.

The ship JOHN LETHBRIGDE, owned by "Deep Ocean Search", recovered the two black boxes last week and continues retrieving the plane wreckage and locating victims' remains.