Indonesia to fetch AirAsia cockpit voice recorder early Tuesday: official

Chief of Indonesia's National Search and Rescue Agency (BASARNAS) Bambang Soelistyo said on Monday that an operation to lift up the cockpit voice recorder ( CVR) of the crashed Airasia plane would be conducted early Tuesday.

"Divers are set for tomorrow morning. The operation would commence at 6 a.m.," Soelistyo told a press conference in his office here, adding that signals emitted by the CVR were received by ships equipped with detection equipment.

Soelistyo also said that divers would be assigned to search for the plane's remaining wrecks which were believed to have contained bodies of most of the people on board the ill-fated plane.

Soelistyo said that most objects detected by the search team have been confirmed as parts of flight QZ8501, with only two not yet confirmed. He said on Sunday that the search team had detected 14 objects suspected to be parts of the plane.

The flight data recorder (FDR) of the plane, which was lifted up Monday morning, is now kept in Indonesia's National Transportation Safety Committee (KNKT) office for further investigation.

Separately, BASARNAS Operation Director Suryadi B. Supriyadi said that divers have already had visual contact with the CVR, whose position was below the wrecked wing of the plane.

"It was actually not far from the FDR, approximately 20 meters apart. It was beneath the plane's heavy wing. Lifting balloons should be able to lift it up. Let's hope that it can be lifted up tomorrow," Supriyadi was quoted as saying by local media at an operation base in Pangkalan Bun, Central Kalimantan.

He added that the wing part is very heavy because it has a tank that stores the fuel of the plane.

Three ships will help lift up the CVR, Supriyadi said.

He expected that divers would also be able to retrieve bodies of passengers believed to have been trapped in the plane parts.

A multinational search operation has been underway, joined by ships and planes from Indonesia, the United States, Australia, Singapore, Malaysia, Russia, Japan, South Korea and China.

Flight QZ8501, with 162 people aboard, plummeted into the Java Sea near the Karimata Strait during its flight from Surabaya to Singapore on Dec. 28.

As of the 16th day, 48 bodies were recovered with 34 of them having been identified. Endi