The cockpit
voice recorder from the AirAsia plane that crashed into the Java Sea has been
located. The recorder, which has yet to be recovered, was found near where the
flight data recorder was retrieved earlier.
Deutsche Welle, 12 Jan 2015
The cockpit
voice recorder was located just hours after officials announced the data flight
recorder had been pulled from beneath a piece of the aircraft's wing and
brought to the surface. The voice recorder was 25 meters (80 feet) from where
the data recorder was found.
It is a key
development in helping investigators find out what caused the aircraft to crash
into the Java Sea less than halfway into Flight 8501 on December 28, killing
all 162 people on board.
Suryadi
Bambang Supriyadi, operation coordinator at Indonesia's national search and
rescue agency said on Monday the voice recorder was lodged beneath heavy
wreckage, and divers were struggling to free it at a depth of 32 meters (105
feet).
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| The cockpit voice recorder was discovered close to the location of the data recorder. |
The flight
data recorder was found in debris from the wing at a depth of about 30 meters
(100 feet), according to Supriyadi. Once it was found, divers concentrated on
locating the source of the other electronic ping heard a few meters away.
Once the
voice recorder is recovered from the wreck, both boxes will be taken to
Jakarta, the capital, for analysis. It could take up to two weeks to download
their information, said Nurcahyo Utomo, an investigator at the National
Committee for Safety Transportation.
The two
instruments emit signals from their beacons and are vital to understanding what
brought the flight down. They provide essential information including the
plane's vertical and horizontal speeds along with engine temperature and final
conversations between the captain and co-pilot.
The last
contact the pilots had with air traffic control, about halfway into their
two-hour journey from Indonesia's second-largest city, Surabaya, to Singapore,
indicated they were entering stormy weather.
Th pilots
asked to climb from 32,000 feet (9,753 meters) to 38,000 feet (11,582 meters)
to avoid threatening clouds. Permission was denied because of heavy air
traffic. Four minutes later, the plane dropped off the radar. No
distress signal was sent.
jm/bw (AP, dpa)
 |
Military
policemen carry the flight data recorder of AirAsia QZ8501 at the airbase in
Pangkalan Bun, Central Kalimantan Jan. 12, 2015. Indonesian navy divers on
Monday retrieved the black box flight data recorder from an AirAsia airliner
that
crashed two weeks ago, killing all 162 people on board, a government
official said.
Flight QZ8501 lost contact with air traffic control in bad
weather on Dec. 28, less
than halfway into a two-hour flight from Indonesia’s
second-biggest city of
Surabaya to Singapore. (Reuters Photo/Darren Whiteside)
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