A black box recorder from the doomed Egyptair flight that crashed over the Mediterranean killing all 66 on board has revealed smoke was detected in one of the toilets.

The Airbus A320 plunged into the eastern Mediterranean Sea en route from Paris to Cairo in May, with the cause of the crash unknown.

Search teams managed to salvage both of the so-called black box flight recorders and investigators have been analysing the information from the data recorder.

A black box recorder from the doomed Egyptair flight that crashed over the Mediterranean killing all 66 on board has revealed smoke was detected in one of the toilets

And Egypt's Aircraft Investigation Committee has revealed smoke was detected in the cabin before it was downed.

In a statement they said: 'Preliminary information shows that the entire flight is recorded on the FDR since its takeoff from Charles de Gaulle airport until the recording stopped at an altitude of 37,000 feet where the accident occurred.

'Recorded data is showing consistency with SCARS messages of lavatory and avionics smoke," the committee added, referring to the Aircraft Communications Addressing and Reporting System, which routinely downloads maintenance and fault data to the airline operator.

The plane had sent a series of warnings indicating that smoke had been detected on board through SCARS.

Recovered wreckage from the jet's front section showed signs of high temperature damage and soot, the committee said.

Those were the first physical signs that fire may have broken out on the A320 airliner, in addition to maintenance messages indicating smoke alarms in the avionics area and lavatory.

Search teams managed to salvage both of the so-called black box flight recorders, pictured, and investigators have been analysing the information from the data recorder

The committee said these findings would need further analysis to discover the source and reason for the marks.

The second black box, the cockpit voice recorder, is still being repaired in laboratories belonging to France's BEA aircraft accident investigation agency, where the data chips from both recorders were sent after the devices were retrieved.

The BEA is involved in the investigation because France is both the flight's point of origin and home to Airbus, the plane's manufacturer. Fifteen of those killed were French.

A United States National Transport Safety Board investigator is also involved, since the plane's engines were built by a consortium led by the U.S. company Pratt & Whitney.

If intact, the cockpit recorder should reveal pilot conversations and any cockpit alarms, as well as other clues such as engine noise.

Wreckage from the doomed flight. The Paris prosecutor's office opened a manslaughter investigation on Monday but said it was not looking into terrorism as a possible cause of the crash at this stage

A search vessel contracted by the Egyptian government from Mauritius-based Deep Ocean Search is still searching the Mediterranean for human remains.

No explanation for the disaster has been ruled out, but current and former aviation officials increasingly believe the reason lies in the aircraft's technical systems, rather than sabotage.

The Paris prosecutor's office opened a manslaughter investigation on Monday but said it was not looking into terrorism as a possible cause of the crash at this stage.

The crash is the third blow since October to Egypt's travel industry, which is still suffering from the 2011 uprising that ended Hosni Mubarak's 30-year rule.