From ABC News, 13/01/2015
The cockpit voice recorder from the AirAsia plane that crashed into the Java Sea last month carrying 162 people has been recovered and taken to an Indonesian navy ship, an official said.
The device was found near where the other half of what constitutes the "black box", the flight data recorder, was retrieved on Monday.
The cockpit voice recorder was taken on board an Indonesian navy vessel and was expected to be sent to Jakarta for analysis, the official said.
The analysis of the recorder is likely to provide an explanation as to what happened to the ill-fated flight, which lost contact with air traffic control in bad weather on December 28, less than halfway into a two-hour flight from Indonesia's second-biggest city of Surabaya to Singapore.
Dozens of Indonesian navy divers took advantage of calmer weather this week to retrieve the black boxes and now hope to find the fuselage of the Airbus.
The flight data recorder was brought by helicopter to Pangkalan Bun, the southern Borneo town that has been the base for the search effort, and then flown to Jakarta for analysis.
Officials said it would undergo a lengthy analysis in the capital with the help of a team of experts including from France and manufacturer Airbus.
The head of the transport safety committee Tatang Kurniadi said the flight data recorder looked to be in good condition.
But investigators may need up to a month to get a complete reading of the data.
"The download is easy, probably one day," the NTSC's head investigator, Mardjono Siswosuwarno, said.
"But the reading is more difficult ... could take two weeks to one month."
The committee said a preliminary report on the accident would be produced within a month and a final report after a year.
Forty-eight bodies have been retrieved from the Java Sea and brought to Surabaya for identification.
Searchers believe more bodies will be found in the plane's fuselage.
Relatives of the victims have urged authorities to make finding the remains of their loved ones the priority.
Official says plane probably exploded before hitting water
Search and rescue agency operations coordinator SB Supriyadi said the wreckage indicated the plane likely "experienced an explosion" before hitting the water due to a significant change in air pressure.
He said the left side of the plane seemed to have disintegrated, pointing to a change in pressure that could have caused an explosion.
"It exploded because of the pressure," Mr Supriyadi said.
"The cabin was pressurised and before the pressure of the cabin could be adjusted, it went down - boom."
Mr Supriyadi said the fact that fishermen in the area had reported hearing an explosion and saw smoke above the water supported this theory.
But another official disputed the likelihood of a blast.
"There is no data to support that kind of theory," said Santoso Sayogo, an investigator at the National Transportation Safety Committee (NTSC).
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di 13 jan 2015 - 5:14