Indonesian divers on Sunday found the crucial black box flight recorders of the AirAsia plane

An aerial photo shows a tail section (C) of the AirAsia flight QZ8501 on the deck of a Crest Onyx ship as the search for black boxes of the aircraft continues in the Java sea on January 11, 2015 (AFP Photo/Zulkarnain)

Indonesian divers on Sunday found the crucial black box flight recorders of the AirAsia plane that crashed in the Java Sea a fortnight ago with 162 people aboard, the transport ministry said.

But they failed to retrieve it immediately from the seabed because it was stuck under debris from the main body of the plane, the ministry added.

"The navy divers in Jadayat state boat have succeeded in finding a very important instrument, the black box of AirAsia QZ8501," said Tonny Budiono, a senior ministry official.

The recorders were at a depth of 30-32 metres (99-106 feet), he said in a statement.

Divers will on Monday try to shift the position of the wreckage to access the black box.

"However, if this effort fails, then the team will lift part of the main body using the same balloon technique used earlier to lift the tail," Budiono added.

After a frustrating two-week search often hampered by bad weather, officials earlier Sunday raised hopes by reporting that strong ping signals had been detected by three vessels involved in the search.

Those signals were coming from the seabed less than one kilometre (0.6 miles) from where the tail of the plane was found, Malaysian Navy chief Abdul Aziz Jaafar said in a post on Twitter. Malaysia's Navy is helping in the search.
The Indonesian meteorological agency has said stormy weather likely caused the Airbus A320-200 to crash as it flew from the Indonesian city of Surabaya to Singapore on December 28.
But a definitive answer is impossible without the black box, which should contain the pilots' final words as well as various flight data.

- 48 bodies found -

S.B. Supriyadi, a director with the National Search and Rescue Agency, told reporters earlier in the day that an object believed to be the plane's main body had also been detected near the source of the pings.

The search, which has involved US, Chinese and other international naval ships, has recovered 48 bodies so far.
Supriyadi said many bodies were believed trapped in the cabin, so reaching that part of the wreckage was also a top priority.
The tail of the plane, with its red AirAsia logo, was lifted out of the water on Saturday using giant balloons and a crane.
It was brought by tugboat on Sunday to a port near the search headquarters, at Pangkalan Bun town on Borneo island.

All but seven of those on board the flight were Indonesian.

The bodies of a South Korean couple were identified on Sunday, but their 11-month-old baby remains unaccounted for, Indonesian authorities said.

The other foreigners were one Singaporean, one Malaysian, one Briton and a Frenchman -- co-pilot Remi Plesel. Their bodies have not been recovered.

While the cause of the crash is unknown, the disaster has once again placed Indonesia's chaotic aviation industry under scrutiny.

Indonesian officials have alleged Indonesia AirAsia did not have a licence to fly the route on the day of the crash, although the airline rejects the claim.

Indonesia's transport ministry quickly banned AirAsia from flying the Surabaya-Singapore route.

On Friday it suspended dozens more routes operated by five other domestic airlines for similar licence violations.
While Indonesia's navy said divers had not yet found the black boxes from the AirAsia plane that crashed into the Java Sea two weeks ago, searchers honed in on intense pings detected amid a growing belief that the devices will soon be recovered.
Three Indonesian ships detected the signals, said Indroyono Soesilo, coordinating minister for Maritime Affairs. They were located around 3.5 kilometres from where the aircraft's rear was discovered.
"The two are close to each other, just about 20 metres (yards)," Soesilo told reporters. "Hopefully, they are the cockpit voice recorder and flight data recorder."
Officials said earlier Sunday that two separate pings had been detected.
Tonny Budiono, team coordinator at the Directorate of Sea Transportation, said in a statement that the signals were intense in one area, and that the recorders were believed to be lodged there beneath wreckage.

If divers are unable to free it, all of the debris will be lifted, the statement said.
Other officials cautioned it was too soon to know whether the sounds were coming from the black boxes, which detached from the tail when the plane plummeted into the sea Dec. 28, killing all 162 people on board. The recorders are key to understanding what caused the aircraft to go down.
"Until now, I have not yet received reports that the black boxes have been discovered," said Henry Bambang Soelistyo, chief of Indonesia's search and rescue agency. "There are signals, or pings, which are suspected to be from the black boxes."
Navy spokesman Manahan Simorangkir said divers had not yet found the devices.
The Commission for Transportation Safety stopped a remote-operated vehicle from being deployed to probe the area where the pings were heard, fearing it could potentially cause damage to the boxes, said Muhammad Ilyas, head of oceanic surveys at Indonesia's technology agency. Instead, the sites were to be examined by divers.
In addition, sonar yesterday detected a large object in the same vicinity as the pings. Officials initially were hopeful it was the main section of the Airbus A320's cabin, but Soelistyo said divers confirmed it was instead a wing and debris from the engine.
Search efforts have been consistently hampered by big waves and powerful currents created by the region's rainy season. Silt and sand, along with murky river runoff, have created blinding conditions for divers.
While the cause of the crash is not yet known, bad weather is believed to have been a factor.
The tail's excavation was a major success in the slow-moving hunt for victims and wreckage from Flight 8501. The red metal chunk from the tail, with the words "AirAsia" clearly visible across it, was brought to the surface from a depth of about 30 metres on Saturday using inflatable balloons. The vertical stabilizer was still largely intact, but the attached jagged fuselage was ripped open and tangled by a mess of wires.
The find, however, was tinged with disappointment when the black boxes were not found still attached. Their beacons emit signals for about 30 days until the batteries die, meaning divers have about two weeks left before they go silent.
Several other large objects have been spotted in the search area by sonar, but they have not yet been confirmed with underwater visuals.
AirAsia CEO Tony Fernandes had expressed optimism earlier Sunday that the effort was gaining momentum.
"Let's hope today is a major breakthrough day and we can find (the) main fuselage," he wrote in a Twitter post.
Many believe most of the victims' bodies are likely entombed inside the aircraft on the seabed. So far, only 48 corpses have been recovered.
Three more bodies were identified Sunday, including Park Seongbeom, 37, and his wife, Lee Kyung Hwa, 34, from South Korea, said Budiyono, who heads East Java's Disaster Victim Identification unit and, like many Indonesians, uses only one name.
He said they were discovered Friday on the seabed, still strapped to their seats. Their baby has not yet been found, but the infant's carrier was still attached to the man.
Sixteen recovered corpses remain unidentified, partially due to decomposition, Budiyono said. Nearly all of the passengers were Indonesian.
The last contact the pilots had with air traffic control, about halfway into their two-hour journey from Indonesia's second-largest city, Surabaya, to Singapore, indicated they were entering stormy weather. They asked to climb from 32,000 feet (9,753 metress) to 38,000 feet (11,582 metress) to avoid threatening clouds, but were denied permission because of heavy air traffic. Four minutes later, the plane dropped off the radar. No distress signal was issued.

One of the flight data recorders (black box) of the crashed AirAsia Flight QZ8501 was located by divers, reports Sky News. The news of the discovery of the black box of the aircraft, an Airbus A320, comes just a few hours after the Inquisitr reported about the news of a large section of the fuselage from the aircraft being found on the seafloor.
According to Channel News Asia, divers on the lookout for the flight data recorders found them stuck under the debris from the body of the aircraft. While they have confirmed that at least one of the black boxes have been found, it is expected to take them another day to retrieve them because of the debris that lies on top of it. Divers are also looking to recover several bodies that could be still lying within the debris of the fuselage located earlier today.
Tonny Budiono, a senior official from the Indonesian government, confirmed that one of the black boxes of the crashed AirAsia Flight 8501 has indeed been found.
“The navy divers in Jadayat state boat have succeeded in finding a very important instrument, the black box of AirAsia QZ8501,” he told reporters.
It has been almost a fortnight since the ill-fated aircraft on its way to Singapore from Surabaya, Indonesia crashed with 162 people on board. All the people inside the aircraft have been declared dead. Speculation is still on regarding the circumstances behind the crash. Now that one of the flight data recorders has been found, investigators should be able to get a clearer picture of what happened during the final minutes of the plane before it crashed.
Prior to the discovery of the black box, divers had managed to recover a tail section of the aircraft from the sea. It was pulled out in a bid to look for the black box, which are positioned near the tail section.
According to SB Supriyadi, a director with the National Search and Rescue Agency, there are two in-flight data recorders on the A320-200 aircraft. While one records data from the flight, the other records the voices of the pilots in the cockpit. It is unclear at this stage as to which of these two data recorders has been found.