Divers recover AirAsia black box

Rival theories over last moments of flight QZ 8501 and 162 victims

Indonesian navy divers retrieved the black box flight data recorder from the wreck of an AirAsia passenger jet yesterday, a major step towards unravelling the cause of the crash that killed all 162 people on board.

However, there was confusion about what happened in the final moments of Flight QZ8501, which crashed off the Indonesian coast on December 28, with one official saying the plane probably exploded before hitting the water and another disputing that theory.

The Airbus A320-200 airliner lost contact with air traffic control in bad weather less than halfway into a two-hour flight from Indonesia’s second-biggest city of Surabaya to Singapore.

“At 7:11, we succeeded in lifting the part of the black box known as the flight data recorder,” Fransiskus Bambang Soelistyo, head of the National Search and Rescue Agency, told a news conference.

The second black box, containing the cockpit voice recorder, is about 20m away from where the flight data recorder was found, but divers have not yet been able to get to it.

“[The cockpit voice recorder] seems to be under a wing, which is quite heavy,” said Supriyadi, operations co-ordinator for the search and rescue agency. “So we will use air bags to lift it. This will be done tomorrow.”

The black boxes contain a wealth of data that will be crucial for investigators piecing together events that led to the plane plunging into the sea.

Supriyadi said the wreckage indicated that the plane likely “experienced an explosion” before hitting the water due to a significant change in air pressure.

He said the left side of the plane seemed to have disintegrated, pointing to a change in pressure that could have caused an explosion.

Supporting this possibility, Supriyadi added, was the fact that fishermen in the area had reported hearing an explosion and saw smoke above the water.

However, 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.

The flight data recorder was brought by helicopter to Pangkalan Bun, the southern Borneo town that has been the base for the search effort, and then flown to Jakarta for analysis.

The black box looked to be in good condition, said Tatang Kurniadi, head of the transport safety committee.

Investigators may need up to a month to get a complete reading of the data.

“The download is easy, probably one day. But the reading is more difficult ... could take two weeks to one month,” said NTSC’s head investigator Mardjono Siswosuwarno.

Over the weekend, three vessels detected ‘pings’ that were believed to be from the black boxes, but strong winds, powerful currents, and high waves hampered search efforts.

Forty-eight bodies have been retrieved from the Java Sea and brought to Surabaya for identification. Searchers believe more bodies will be found in the plane’s fuselage.