Second black box, main cabin yet to be recovered; ‘Plane exploded as it hit the water’
Second black box, main cabin yet to be recovered; ‘Plane exploded as it hit the water’
Indonesian divers on Monday retrieved the flight data recorder of the AirAsia plane that went down in the Java Sea with 162 people on board, a potential breakthrough in efforts to discover what caused the crash.
The second black box, the cockpit voice recorder, was spotted by divers a short distance from the first but they had not yet managed to retrieve it because it was trapped under wreckage, officials said. They also gave new dramatic details of the accident, saying a rapid change in pressure caused the plane to “explode” as it hit the water.
Navy divers brought the flight data recorder to the surface early in the morning, said national rescue chief Bambang Soelistyo, after a fortnight-long frustrating search often hampered by bad weather.
“We succeeded in bringing up part of the black box that we call the flight data recorder,” Mr Soelistyo told reporters in Jakarta. S.B. Supriyadi, a director with the rescue agency, said efforts would resume Tuesday to recover the second recorder, which was about 20 metres (65 feet) from the first and trapped under a wing.
He told reporters in Pangkalan Bun on Borneo island, the search headquarters, that giant balloons might be used to raise the wing so that the device could be retrieved.
The flight data recorder monitors information such as airspeed and heading, while the cockpit voice recorder stores radio transmissions and sounds in the cockpit. Both are located near the rear of the plane and designed to survive underwater.
Flight QZ8501 crashed on December 28 on a short journey from the Indon-esian city of Surabaya to Singapore. Indonesia’s meteorological agency has said stormy weather likely caused the Airbus A320-200 to go down but a definitive answer is impossible without the data recorders.
After a lengthy search, rescuers on Sunday detected “ping” signals from the recorders’ emergency transmitters close to what was initially thought to be the main body of the plane.
However Indonesian military chief Moeldoko told reporters aboard Navy ship the KRI Banda Aceh that the main cabin, which is believed to contain most of the victims, had not yet been found. Just 48 bodies have so far been recovered.
