© 2024 KALW 91.7 FM Bay Area
KALW Public Media / 91.7 FM Bay Area
Play Live Radio
Next Up:
0:00
0:00
0:00 0:00
Available On Air Stations

AirAsia Search: Divers Recover 2nd Black Box

A second black box was recovered by divers from the bottom of the Java Sea today, giving investigators another clue that could help them determine what caused AirAsia Flight 8501 to go down last month.

Tonny Budiono, the coordinator at Indonesia's Directorate of Sea Transport, said the cockpit voice recorder was extracted from beneath a wing at a depth of about 98 feet. The aircraft's flight data recorder was recovered Monday.

"Thank God," he said, according to The Associated Press. "This is good news for investigators to reveal the cause of the plane crash."

The cockpit voice recorder will be taken to Indonesia's capital, Jakarta, where it will be downloaded and analyzed. As the AP notes, "Since it records in a two-hour loop, all discussions between the captain and co-pilot should be available."

Flight 8501 disappeared Dec. 28 about 42 minutes after it took off from Surabaya, Indonesia, en route to Singapore. All 162 people on board the plane were killed; 48 bodies have been recovered.

Copyright 2021 NPR. To see more, visit https://www.npr.org.

Krishnadev Calamur is NPR's deputy Washington editor. In this role, he helps oversee planning of the Washington desk's news coverage. He also edits NPR's Supreme Court coverage. Previously, Calamur was an editor and staff writer at The Atlantic. This is his second stint at NPR, having previously worked on NPR's website from 2008-15. Calamur received an M.A. in journalism from the University of Missouri.