Investigators said they want to examine the wreckage, including large pieces of the jetliner's wings, tail, fuselage and an engine, before deciding whether to renew the costly deep-sea salvage work. This latest pause in the recovery is a sign that the National Transportation Safety Board wants to again assess whether it already has enough evidence to identify a cause for the crash, which killed all 217 board. Investigators have still reached no conclusions about what brought down the airplane. But they continue to focus on a theory that a reserve pilot may have intentionally crashed the Cairo-bound plane. Yesterday, the NTSB announced that a Navy submarine equipped with video cameras spotted the Boeing 767's second engine.
Officials have no immediate plans to raise the engine.
The main salvage ship in the recovery effort, a 520-foot Dutch vessel called the Smit Pioneer, returned from the crash site to Quonset Point on Dec. 20. Yesterday, the NTSB announced that it was sending the ship home, partly out of concerns about cost. NTSB spokesman Ted Lopatkiewicz said last night of the wreckage retrieved so far. The Smit Pioneer started its work on Dec. 12, using clamshell buckets to hoist human remains and aircraft fragments from the crash site 60 miles south of Nantucket Island. The debris filled 16 containers the size of small moving vans.