Black box of crashed AirAsia plane retrieved

Military policemen carry the flight data recorder of AirAsia QZ8501 at the airbase in Pangkalan Bun, Central Kalimantan, January 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. [Photo/Agencies]

JAKARTA - Indonesian divers have retrieved the flight data recorder of the crashed AirAsia Flight QZ8501 in the Java Sea, the chief of the National Search and Rescue Agency ( BASARNAS) said on Monday.

"The flight data recorder has been evacuated," BASARNAS head Bambang Soelistyo told a press conference at the agency's headquarters, adding that the black box was discovered under the wing of the ill-fated Airbus 320-200.

Divers were conducting further search for another black box, the cockpit voice recorder, he said.

Search ships have detected big objects believed to be the fuselage of the plane in the crash site off Indonesia's Central Kalimantan.

Divers would recover more bodies of passengers possibly trapped inside the aircraft's body, Soelistyo added.

On Sunday night, the marine transport directorate general at the Transport Ministry said one of the two black boxes was found wedged between pieces of the plane's wreckage, but divers failed to retrieve it.

The flight data and cockpit voice recorders, known as black boxes, are crucial to helping determine the cause of the air crash. Initial investigations suggested that bad weather was a contributing factor.

Flight QZ8501, with 162 people aboard, went down in the Java Sea near the Karimata Strait en route from Surabaya to Singapore on Dec 28.

A multinational search operation has been underway to lift up wreckage and bodies of the victims, joined by ships and planes from Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore, the United States, Japan, Australia, Russia, South Korea and China. But strong winds, currents and high waves have hampered the search efforts.

A total of 48 bodies of the victims have been recovered from the sea, with 27 of them having been identified, since debris and bodies from the crashed plane were spotted on Dec 30.