Divers have retrieved one black box and located the other from the AirAsia plane that crashed into the Java Sea more than two weeks ago.
The cockpit voice recorder was found just hours after officials announced on Monday that the flight data recorder had been pulled from beneath a piece of the aircraft's wing and brought to the sea's surface, said Suryadi Bambang Supriyadi, operation co-ordinator for Indonesia's National Search and Rescue Agency.
However, he said that the voice recorder remained lodged beneath heavy wreckage, and that divers were struggling to free it at a depth of 32 metres.
Searchers began zeroing in on the sites a day earlier after three Indonesian ships picked up intense pings from the area, but they were unable to see the devices due to strong currents and poor visibility.
The two instruments, which emit signals from their beacons, are vital to understanding what brought Flight 8501 down on December 28, killing all 162 people on board.
They provide essential information, including the plane's vertical and horizontal speeds along with engine temperature and final conversations between the captain and co-pilot.
The flight data recorder was lodged under debris from the wing at a depth of about 30 metres, Supriyadi said.
Once it was found, divers concentrated on locating the source of the other ping heard only a few metres away.
Once the second device is recovered, both boxes will be taken to Jakarta for analysis.
It could take up to two weeks to download their information, said Nurcahyo Utomo, an investigator at the National Committee for Safety Transportation.
Share
