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 Budionom, 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.
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