January 13, 2015
Divers in the Java Sea have retrieved the cockpit voice recorder from the crashed AirAsia flight QZ8501, say officials.
Diver in search and rescue operation (4 Jan 2015)
The retrieval comes a day after the first piece of the so-called black box, the flight data recorder, was also found and brought to shore.
January 13, 2015
Divers in the Java Sea have retrieved the cockpit voice recorder from the crashed AirAsia flight QZ8501, say officials.
Diver in search and rescue operation (4 Jan 2015)
The retrieval comes a day after the first piece of the so-called black box, the flight data recorder, was also found and brought to shore.
The aircraft with 162 people on board disappeared between Surabaya in Indonesia and Singapore on 28 December.
The two devices will help investigators understand more about what went wrong.
Forty-eight bodies have been recovered so far, but most of the victims are believed to still be inside the fuselage.
SB Supriadi from Indonesia's search and rescue agency told the BBC's Indonesian service the fuselage had been located by divers about 1.5km (0.9 miles) from where the tail section was found last week.
He said there were no plans yet to go down and retrieve it.
Pilot conversations
The voice recorder was discovered close to where the flight data recorder was found on Monday.
Navy divers found it under debris and not under a wing as initially thought, a military official said on Indonesian television.
It was then handed to the Indonesian air crash investigation team.
"This is good news for investigators to reveal the cause of the plane crash," said Tonny Budiono, sea navigation director at the Transportation Ministry.
The BBC's Karishma Vaswani said the device – which records all conversations between the pilots – will be analyzed by aviation experts.
The flight data recorder – holding information about the speed at which the plane was travelling, its altitude and other technical information – is already in the capital.
The tail was recovered last week but the black box was not inside
An Indonesian worker (top C) cuts the tail of the AirAsia flight QZ8501 in Kumai on January 12, 2015, after debris from the crash was retrieved from the Java sea.: The tail was recovered last week but the black box was not inside.
Flight recorders are designed to survive a crash and being submerged in water. They contain underwater locator beacons which emit so-called "pings" for at least 30 days.
Black box flight recorders
These pings were detected by search vessels at the weekend but divers were prevented from going down to find them by strong currents and high waves.
Timeline: AirAsia QZ8501
28 Dec: AirAsia says it has lost contact with flight QZ8501 which was en route from Surabaya, Indonesia to Singapore with 162 people on board
30 Dec: Wreckage seen floating off coast of Borneo. Later officials confirm it is from the AirAsia flight. A body is also seen. Search and rescue teams navigate high waves, strong currents and bad weather to recover wreckage and bodies
3 Jan: The Indonesian weather agency says it believes bad weather was the "biggest factor" in the crash
10 Jan: Tail of the plane is lifted out of the Java Sea, but the "black box" is not found where it is usually housed
12 Jan: Flight data recorder is retrieved and sent to Jakarta for memory to be downloaded and analysed
13 Jan: Cockpit voice recorder is retrieved from under heavy wreckage, hopefully containing the pilots' last conversations
The AirAsia plane was 42 minutes into its short flight to Singapore when it vanished from radar.
The cause of the crash is not yet known, but bad weather is thought to have been a factor. The pilot's last communication was a request for permission to change course to avoid a storm.
But it has also emerged that AirAsia may not have had clearance to fly the Surabaya-Singapore route on the day in question. Its licence for the route has now been suspended.
Courtesy: BBC News
