Crucial AirAsia cockpit black box recovered

Indonesian divers have retrieved the black box cockpit voice recorder from the wreckage of the AirAsia plane that crashed in the Java Sea two weeks ago, local media has quoted a transport ministry official as saying.

The black box was found on Tuesday near the location of where another flight data recorder was retrieved a day earlier, the Indonesian news channel MetroTV reported.

The cockpit voice recorder was on board an Indonesian navy vessel and expected to be sent to the capital, Jakarta, for analysis, the report said.

The Airbus A320-200 airliner lost contact with air traffic control in bad weather conditions on December 28, less than halfway into a two-hour flight from Indonesia's second-biggest city of Surabaya to Singapore.

The cockpit voice and flight data recorders are vital to understanding what brought Flight 8501 down, killing all 162 passengers.

The Indonesian meteorological agency has said that stormy weather likely caused the crash, but a definitive answer is impossible without the black box, which should contain the pilots' final words as well as various flight data.

Credit: Aljazeera