AirAsia QZ8501 Black Box Found; Cockpit Voice Recorder Still Underwater

One of the box blacks from Air Asia QZ8501 was recovered by Indonesian Navy divers this weekend as questions continue to swirl about how the commercial jetliner crashed in the Java Sea last month.

The black box located by divers was the flight data recorder, rescue officials told Reuters. The second black box, containing the cockpit voice recorder, is located about 20 meters away from where the flight data recorder was founded but divers were not able to find it in murky waters.

"Indonesia has said publicly that it will handle the analysis of the flight data and cockpit voice recorders here — but it is likely that international teams will also be involved," wrote the BBC's Karishma Vaswani in Jakarta. "The unfortunate silver lining of having had so many air disasters over the last decade has meant that Indonesian teams are very well equipped to analyze the data recorders and piece together what happened. Aviation analysts expect a preliminary report within a month, and a more detailed report within a year."

Investigators believe the black boxes contain a wealth of information needed to determine the events that led to the airliner falling out of the sky into the sea.

Marsma Supriyadi, operations coordinator for the search and rescue agency, told Reuters that he believes the wreckage indicates that the plane possibly "experienced an explosion" before hitting the water because of a significant change in air pressure.

He told the news agency he came to the conclusion because the left side of the airliner looked to have disintegrated. Fishermen in the location also reported hearing an explosion and seeing smoke in the water.

Santoso Sayogo, an investigator at the National Transportation Safety Committee, though, rebuffed Supriyardi's conclusion.

"There is no data to support that kind of theory," Sayogo told Reuters.

The AirAsia flight went down in bad weather with 162 people on board, according to BBC News. The flight took off from Surabaya in Indonesia on its way to Singapore before it disappeared off radar Dec. 28.

While several dozen bodies have been recovered from the plane by divers, rescuers believe that most of the victims remain inside the fuselage, which has yet to be found.

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