The flight data recorder was recovered Sunday

In this story:

• Families grieve at Peggy's Cove
• Should descent have begun sooner?
• Related stories and sites

HALIFAX, Nova Scotia (CNN) -- Canadian navy divers are within 200 yards of the second black box from Swissair Flight 111, according to Navy Capt. Roger Girourard. The navy submarine Okanogan detected a signal from the cockpit voice recorder early Monday, and unexpectedly good weather was helping the recovery operations.

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The first flight data recorder, recovered Sunday, is now being examined in an Ottawa laboratory. If it's in good condition, it could provide more than 100 types of technical data that could help explain why the plane's cockpit filled with smoke, and why the pilots' emergency conversation with traffic controllers was cut off six minutes before the crash.

The second black box should have made recordings of voices and other noises in the plane's cockpit.

Divers are also trying to confirm that three large pieces of wreckage near the flight data recorder are sections of the plane's fuselage.

"Some of them are squashed. It's in very poor shape, but it is visible and it looks like an aircraft fuselage," said Capt. Phil Webster, a navy spokesman.

Recovery of the fuselage could also lead searchers to recover many more bodies, officials said. All 229 people on board the MD-11 jetliner were killed when it crashed last Wednesday night.

A service was held Sunday for victims' families

More than 300 family members have traveled to the small fishing village of Peggy's Cove, to look out over the waters where Swissair Flight 111 went down Among the dead were 131 Americans and two Canadians.

At a military air base outside Halifax, pathologists continued the grim and technically difficult task of trying to identify the badly fragmented human remains that have been retrieved so far.

Dr. John Butt, Nova Scotia's chief medical examiner, said he has been searching for a gentle way to convey to the victims' families that few of them will receive intact bodies for burial.

The Swissair plane crashed 16 minutes after pilots reported smoke in the cockpit and decided to attempt an emergency landing.

The salvage ship Grapple, which aided in the recovery of TWA Flight 800 wreckage two years ago, was sent to Halifax

In Zurich, Swissair officials said they had reconstructed the final phase of the flight, based on information from Canadian investigators. They said the plane couldn't have made a direct approach for an emergency landing in Halifax from where it made the first distress call because it was flying too high and was too heavy, with 30 tons of fuel meant for the Europe crossing.

Swissair officials said the plane had started toward the Halifax airport, but made two sharp turns first as it tried to descend and dump fuel.

One aviation expert, quoted by The Associated Press, suggested the pilot did not act quickly enough.

Alan Wolk, a U.S. pilot and aviation lawyer, said in a statement Sunday, that Flight 111's pilot, Urs Zimmermann, showed an initial lack of urgency, and should have begun an emergency descent sooner.

"The MD-11 could have been landed overweight without difficulty," Wolk said. "We have learned from aircraft fires historically that the only procedure that has a prayer of avoiding an accident is the quickest possible descent and landing."

CNN's Carl Rochelle and The Associated Press contributed to this report.