Divers retrieve AirAsia black box from beneath aircraft wing

Indonesian navy divers retrieved one black box recorder Monday and located the other from the AirAsia plane that crashed more than two weeks ago, key developments that should help investigators unravel what caused the aircraft to plummet into the Java Sea.

The cockpit voice recorder was found hours after officials announced that the flight data recorder was pulled from beneath a piece of the aircraft's wing and brought to the sea's surface, said Suryadi Bambang Supriyadi, operation coordinator for Indonesia's national search and rescue agency.

He said that the voice recorder was about 66 feet from the data recorder but remained lodged beneath heavy wreckage at a depth of 105 feet and that divers were struggling to free it.

Searchers began zeroing in on the location a day earlier, after three Indonesian ships picked up pings from the area, but they were unable to see the devices because of strong currents and poor visibility.

The two instruments, which emit ultrasonic pulses if they land in water, are vital to understanding what brought down Flight 8501 on Dec. 28, killing all 162 people on board. The boxes should provide all the conversations between the captain and co-pilot and essential information about the plane for the duration of the flight.

"There's like 200-plus parameters they record," aviation safety expert John Goglia, a former U.S. National Transportation Safety Board member, told The Associated Press. "It's going to provide us an ocean of material."

The flight data recorder will be taken to Jakarta, Indonesia's capital, for evaluation, and the other black box will be sent as soon as it is retrieved. It could take up to two weeks to download and analyze their information, said Nurcahyo Utomo, an investigator at the National Committee for Safety Transportation.

The slow-moving hunt, which has often gone days with little progress, was boosted over the weekend when the Airbus A320's tail was lifted from the seabed. It was the first major wreckage recovered from the crash site, but the black boxes were not found inside as hoped.

Search efforts have been consistently hampered by big waves and powerful currents created by the region's rainy season. Silt and sand, along with river runoff, have created blinding conditions for divers.

Henry Bambang Soelistyo, head of the national search and rescue agency, said Sunday that divers located a wing and debris from an engine. Officials have been working urgently to locate the main section of the plane's cabin, where many of the victims are believed entombed.

So far, only 48 bodies have been recovered. Decomposition is making identification more difficult for desperate families waiting to bury their loved ones. Nearly all the passengers were Indonesian.

"I still believe many victims remain trapped there, and we must find them," said Gen. Moeldoko, Indonesia's military chief, who uses one name.

He said more than 80 divers are involved in the recovery effort and have been ordered to make finding the fuselage their top priority.

The last contact the cockpit had with air traffic control, less than halfway into their two-hour journey from Indonesia's second-largest city, Surabaya, to Singapore, indicated they were entering stormy weather. The pilot asked to climb from 32,000 feet to 38,000 feet to avoid threatening clouds but were denied permission because of heavy air traffic. Four minutes later, the plane dropped off the radar without emitting a distress signal. 

But there was uncertainty about what happened in the flight’s final moments, with one official saying the plane probably exploded before hitting the water and another disputing that theory.

Supriyadi said the wreckage indicated that the plane likely "experienced an explosion" because of a significant change in air pressure before hitting the water. He said the left side of the plane seemed to have disintegrated, pointing to a change in pressure.

But another official disputed the likelihood of a blast. "There is no data to support that kind of theory," said Santoso Sayogo, an investigator at the National Transportation Safety Committee.

Wire services