Story highlights Egyptian media: Airbus detects signals from its emergency device

Having the signals dramatically decreases the search area

French send a vessel with equipment to detect pings from black boxes

(CNN) Airbus has detected signals from the Mediterranean Sea where EgyptAir Flight 804 crashed last week, Egypt's state-run Al Ahram news agency reported Thursday.

The signals were emitted by the plane's emergency locator transmitter, a device that can manually or automatically activate at impact and will usually send a distress signal. The signals from the emergency locator transmitter are different from the pings emitted by the "black boxes."

Having these signals narrows down the area that the multinational search team has been focusing on -- which a few days ago was described as "about the size of Connecticut." It dramatically decreases the search area to a 5-kilometer (3.1-mile) radius, giving investigators a more specific location to detect pings from the black boxes.

The missing EgyptAir plane, which had 66 people on board, was an Airbus A320 heading from Paris to Cairo.

A French vessel, equipped with special detection equipment to locate the pings, will begin an underwater search for the wreckage "in the coming days," according to the BEA, France's accident investigation agency. That French naval vessel, La Place, departed Tuesday from Porto Vecchio toward the Egyptian coast.

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