AirAsia crash: Second black box retrieved

Divers retrieved the crashed AirAsia plane's second black box from the bottom of the Java Sea on Tuesday, giving experts essential tools to piece together what brought Flight 8501 down.

The cockpit voice recorder was freed from beneath heavy wreckage at a depth of about 30 meters, a day after the flight data recorder was recovered, said a representative of the Transportation Ministry.

The device will be flown to the capital, Jakarta, to be analyzed with the other black box, a process that could take up to two weeks. Since it records in a two-hour loop, all discussions between the captain and co-pilot should be available.

The plane disappeared from radar less than halfway into a two-hour flight from Surabaya,Indonesia, to Singapore on 28 December. It was carrying 162 people, but only 48 bodies have been recovered so far.

Decomposition of the bodies is making identification more difficult for desperate families waiting to bury their loved ones. Nearly all passengers and crew were Indonesian.

Over the weekend, the tail of the Airbus A320 was recovered, emblazoned with the carrier's red-and-white cursive logo. The black boxes are normally inside the tail, but were missing when the wreckage was pulled to the surface.

The devices were soon located after three Indonesian ships detected strong "pings" being emitted from their beacons, about 20 meters apart. Powerful currents, large waves and blinding silt have hindered divers' efforts throughout the search, but they took advantage of calmer early morning conditions on Monday and Tuesday to recover the instruments.