Divers retrieve one of two Air Asia 'black boxes'

Divers from the Indonesian navy have reportedly retrieved the black box flight data recorder from the wreck of AirAsia Flight QZ8501 earlier today, a significant step towards finding what caused the tragedy.

There is confusion about the final moments of Flight QZ8501, which crashed off the Indonesian coast on the 28th of December last year, with officials contradicting each other on whether the aircraft exploded before it hit the water.

Air traffic control lost contact with the AirAsia Airbus A320-200 in bad weather less than an hour into its planned two-hour flight from Indonesia to Singapore.

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.

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

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

The director of Indonesia's search and rescue agency, Suryadi B. Supriyadi, who is coordinating the search has announced that the cockpit voice recorder is believed to be under the heavy wing section, which will be lifted using air bags. The black boxes contain vital data for investigators piecing together the cause and final moments of the doomed airliner.

Supriyadi said the wreckage indicated that the plane likely "experienced an explosion" caused by a significant change in air pressure before hitting the water, indicated by the left side of the plane having apparently disintegrated.

In addition, fishermen in the area had reported hearing an explosion and saw smoke above the water, which Supriyadi said strengthens this thesis.

However, Santoso Sayogo, an investigator at the National Transportation Safety Committee disputed this, telling the press that  there was “no data to support that kind of theory.”

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 one NTSC investigator.