AirAsia jet's black box retrieved, to be analysed for leads

Divers today retrieved the cockpit voice recorder of the crashed AirAsia jet from its wreck in the Java Sea as experts will now examine the crucial black box recorders to unravel the mystery of the disaster that killed all 162 people on board.
The cockpit voice recorder, that possesses 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 choppy waters yesterday.
It was freed from beneath the heavy ruins of a wing early in the morning from a depth of about 30 metres, said Tonny Budiono, sea navigation director at the Transportation Ministry.

This comes as a major potential breakthrough to solve the mystery of the Airbus A320-200's fatal crash on December 28 after days of multi-national efforts to scour the seabed were hampered by bad weather.
Earlier, an official said the cockpit voice recorder - part of two recorders that make up the black box - was on an Indonesian navy ship and and be flown to Jakarta to be downloaded and analysed with the flight data recorder.
"This is good news for investigators to reveal the cause of the plane crash," said Budiono.

The black box recorders, which are actually orange, are expected to shed new light on the mysterious crash that claimed all 162 lives on board the ill-fated AirAsia Flight QZ8501, en route from Indonesia's Surabaya city to Singapore.

Investigators may need up to a month to get a complete reading of the data to determine what caused the AirAsia group's first fatal accident half way into a two-hour flight.
Officials yesterday gave new dramatic details of the accident, with search and rescue agency coordinator S B Supriyadi saying an initial analysis of the wreckage recovered so far indicated the plane exploded on impact with the water due to a rapid change in pressure.
Meanwhile, chief of Indonesia's search and rescue agency BASARNAS Fransiskus Bambang Soelistyo today said the legal timeframe for retrieving bodies is seven days.