Jakarta, Indonesia (CNN)Searchers have found the flight recorders of AirAsia Flight QZ8501 in the Java Sea, officials said Monday, a major breakthrough in the effort to figure out why the plane crashed last month
Divers found the flight data recorder under the wreckage of one of the plane's wings, said Bambang Soelistyo, the head of Indonesia's search and rescue agency.
The search teams have also located but not yet recovered the other key source of information about the plane, the cockpit voice recorder, said Mardjono Siswosuwarno, the chief investigator into the crash.
The voice recorder is
underneath debris, he said, expressing hope that it could be retrieved easily.
The two devices, known popularly as black boxes, are seen as crucial to unraveling the mystery of what brought down Flight QZ8501 as it flew toward Singapore from the Indonesian city of Surabaya with 162 people on board.
Finding the data recorder is "a huge step in the right direction for investigators," said CNN aviation correspondent Rene Marsh. "It gives them so much information that they didn't have before."Coupled with the debris that's already been collected, the data recorder will enable investigators to "begin to paint the picture of exactly what happened when things went terribly wrong for this aircraft," Marsh said.
The data recorder is expected to provide a vast range of information about what the plane was doing, including its air speed, engine performance and the cabin pressure.
The discovery of the device under the wreckage of a wing is significant, according to Mary Schiavo, a former inspector general of the U.S. Department of Transportation.
"That itself is a clue, because I think that pretty much indicates that the plane broke apart when it hit the water," she said, adding that if the aircraft had broken up at a high altitude, investigators wouldn't "have found the wreckage that close together."
The cockpit voice recorder, meanwhile, captures all sounds on the flight deck, notably conversations between the pilots.
The condition of the flight data recorder wasn't immediately clear, but Marsh said it was likely to have come through the crash with its information intact.
"They are built to withstand the most severe aircraft accidents," Marsh said. "We're talking about high temperatures, we're talking about pressure from being at the depths of the ocean."
Most bodies still missing
The flight data recorder is expected to be taken to a lab in Jakarta, the Indonesian capital, for analysis.
Once the information is downloaded, investigators should have "a pretty good idea within a couple of days" of what happened on board the plane, Schiavo said.
But she added that she didn't think officials would release any information publicly for at least a couple of weeks.
The tail section of the aircraft, which houses the black boxes, was lifted from the Java Sea on Saturday. But searchers didn't find the flight recorders inside it.
The flight data recorder was found about 2.5 kilometers (1.5 miles) from the location of the tail, according to Soelistyo, the head of the search agency.
Searchers are still looking for the plane's fuselage, where many of the bodies of those on board the plane might be located.
A total of 48 bodies have so far been recovered from the sea, some of them still strapped into seats.
Flight QZ8501 went down on December 28. It was operated by AirAsia's Indonesian affiliate.
Divers found the flight data recorder under the wreckage of one of the plane's wings, said Bambang Soelistyo, the head of Indonesia's search and rescue agency.
The search teams have also located but not yet recovered the other key source of information about the plane, the cockpit voice recorder, said Mardjono Siswosuwarno, the chief investigator into the crash.
The voice recorder is
underneath debris, he said, expressing hope that it could be retrieved easily.
The two devices, known popularly as black boxes, are seen as crucial to unraveling the mystery of what brought down Flight QZ8501 as it flew toward Singapore from the Indonesian city of Surabaya with 162 people on board.
Finding the data recorder is "a huge step in the right direction for investigators," said CNN aviation correspondent Rene Marsh. "It gives them so much information that they didn't have before."Coupled with the debris that's already been collected, the data recorder will enable investigators to "begin to paint the picture of exactly what happened when things went terribly wrong for this aircraft," Marsh said.
The data recorder is expected to provide a vast range of information about what the plane was doing, including its air speed, engine performance and the cabin pressure.
The discovery of the device under the wreckage of a wing is significant, according to Mary Schiavo, a former inspector general of the U.S. Department of Transportation.
"That itself is a clue, because I think that pretty much indicates that the plane broke apart when it hit the water," she said, adding that if the aircraft had broken up at a high altitude, investigators wouldn't "have found the wreckage that close together."
The cockpit voice recorder, meanwhile, captures all sounds on the flight deck, notably conversations between the pilots.
The condition of the flight data recorder wasn't immediately clear, but Marsh said it was likely to have come through the crash with its information intact.
"They are built to withstand the most severe aircraft accidents," Marsh said. "We're talking about high temperatures, we're talking about pressure from being at the depths of the ocean."
Most bodies still missing
The flight data recorder is expected to be taken to a lab in Jakarta, the Indonesian capital, for analysis.
Once the information is downloaded, investigators should have "a pretty good idea within a couple of days" of what happened on board the plane, Schiavo said.
But she added that she didn't think officials would release any information publicly for at least a couple of weeks.
The tail section of the aircraft, which houses the black boxes, was lifted from the Java Sea on Saturday. But searchers didn't find the flight recorders inside it.
The flight data recorder was found about 2.5 kilometers (1.5 miles) from the location of the tail, according to Soelistyo, the head of the search agency.
Searchers are still looking for the plane's fuselage, where many of the bodies of those on board the plane might be located.
A total of 48 bodies have so far been recovered from the sea, some of them still strapped into seats.
Flight QZ8501 went down on December 28. It was operated by AirAsia's Indonesian affiliate.
2 comments:
After the MH370 disaster all planes were meant to have GPS EPIRB a safety alert. Clearly AirAsia didn't have that. It took days instead of hours trying to locate the plane. The fact that bodies were seen holding hands and some even had their life jackets on as was reported shows that some people survived the crash but were left to perish from exposure, a double tragedy. If the plane was located earlier many people would have been saved. Hah I wish these airline companies can do something.
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