the egyptian authorities infamously obstructed the investigation of the crash of flight 990 in 1999, which was deliberately flown into the ocean by a pilot that had been reprimanded and was to be discharged for some gnarly sexual allegations upon return to egypt. the egyptians need this crash to be
not terrorism (it will destroy tourism) or pilot error (ditto), but they need the plane to have disintegrated due to a design flaw: viola! airbus' fault.
I wouldn't put it past the egyptians to have damaged the recorders themselves before they sent them to airbus for analysis.
Egypt Says Black Boxes of Crashed Plane Arrive in ParisCAIRO ? Egyptian investigators on Monday said the black boxes from a passenger plane that crashed last month have arrived in Paris, where technicians will attempt to repair them.
Both devices were extensively damaged when EgyptAir Flight 804 from Paris to Cairo crashed into the Mediterranean on May 19, killing all 66 people on board and Egyptian investigators were unable to download information from the recorders.
The Egyptian investigating committee said in a statement that the "electronic boards" of both the cockpit voice recorder and flight data recorder were flown to France.
It remains unclear what caused the crash. The pilots made no distress call, and no group has claimed to have brought down the aircraft.
Linky 
