Indonesian divers find AirAsia cockpit voice recorder

Indonesian divers pulled the cockpit voice recorder from the sunken wreckage of an AirAsia passenger jet, a key step towards determining the cause of the crash that killed all 162 people aboard.

Indonesia AirAsia’s Flight QZ8501 lost contact with air traffic control in bad weather on December 28, less than halfway into a two-hour flight from Indonesia’s second-biggest city of Surabaya to Singapore.

The cockpit voice recorder, which retains the last two hours of conversation between the pilots and with air traffic controllers, was found close to where the flight data recorder was recovered from the bottom of the Java Sea.

“Today we have completed searching for the main things that we have been looking for,” Rear Admiral Widodo, the commander of the navy’s western fleet, said after handing over the cockpit voice recorder to investigators. “But the team will still try to find the body of the plane in case there are still bodies inside.”

Together the black boxes, which are actually orange, contain a wealth of data that will be crucial for investigators piecing together the sequence of events that led to the Airbus A320-200 plunging into the sea.

The cockpit voice recorder is expected to be sent to the capital, Jakarta, for analysis.

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

The AirAsia group’s first fatal accident took place more than two weeks ago, but wind, high waves and strong currents have slowed efforts to recover bodies and wreckage from the shallow waters off Borneo island.

Forty-eight bodies have been plucked from the Java Sea and brought to Surabaya for identification.