Mabaki ya Air Asia

INVESTIGATORS believe the AirAsia plane that crashed in the Java Sea “experienced an explosion” before hitting the water, due to a significant change in air pressure. 

“My analysis is, based on the wreckage found and other findings, the plane experienced an explosion before it hit the water,” Suryadi Bambang Supriyadi, operations coordinator at the National Search and Rescue Agency, told reporters.

He said the left side of the plane seemed to have disintegrated, pointing to a change in pressure that could have caused an explosion.

An aerial photo shows the tail section of the AirAsia flight QZ8501 on the deck of the Crest Onyx

Indonesian divers have found the voice recorder from the downed AirAsia plane just hours after retrieving the black box flight recorder from the sea.

 Earlier, officials confirmed that Indonesian Navy divers had retrieved the black box flight recorder from the AirAsia plane, which crashed in the Java Sea a fortnight ago with 162 people aboard.

The retrieval is a major breakthrough in the slow-moving hunt to understanding what brought down Flight 8501 on December 28.

 Henry Bambang Soelistyo, chief of Indonesia’s search and rescue agency, says the flight data recorder was brought to the surface by four divers early on Monday morning.

“I received information from the National Transport Safety Committee chief that at 7.11 am, we succeeded in bringing up part of the black box that we call the flight data recorder,” Bambang Soelistyo told reporters.

Divers began to zero in on the site a day earlier, after picking up intense pings from its beacons.

The tail of the AirAsia QZ8501 plane is lifted onto the deck of the Indonesian Search and Rescue ship Crest Onyx.

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