Story highlights Egypt: Recorder's memory unit found despite damage to cockpit voice recorder

EgyptAir Flight 804 crashed in Mediterranean in May with 66 people aboard

(CNN) The cockpit voice recorder for EgyptAir Flight 804 has been found but is damaged, an Egyptian investigative committee said Thursday, a day after the government said it found the wreckage of the ill-fated flight.

"The device was damaged and the retrieval process was conducted in several stages," the committee said in a statement.

It said a vessel used equipment to pick up the memory unit, which is considered the recorder's most important part.

The Airbus A320, which had 66 people aboard, crashed May 19 in the Mediterranean Sea on a flight from Paris to Cairo. Authorities have been searching for wreckage and the plane's flight data and cockpit voice recorders for insight into what happened.

The cockpit voice recorder is one of the so-called black boxes for which searchers have been looking. It captures sounds on the flight deck that can include conversations between pilots, warning alarms from the aircraft and background noise. By listening to the ambient sounds in a cockpit before a crash, experts can determine if a stall took place and estimate the speed at which the plane was traveling.