AirAsia plane likely exploded before hitting water, official says
Changes in air pressure cited as divers retrieve one of the plane's black boxes, locate the other
The AirAsia plane that crashed two weeks ago in Indonesia probably "exploded" before hitting the water due to changes in air pressure, a senior government official said.
"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 the explosion.
It comes as divers retrieved one black box yesterday and located the other underwater - a key development that will help investigators unravel what caused the aircraft to plummet into the Java Sea. The cockpit voice recorder was found hours after officials announced the flight data recorder had been pulled from beneath a piece of the aircraft's wing and brought to the sea's surface.
Supriyadi said the voice recorder was located about 20 metres away from the data recorder, but it remained lodged beneath heavy wreckage, and divers were struggling to free it at a depth of 32 metres.
Searchers began zeroing in on the location a day earlier after three Indonesian ships picked up intense pings from the area, but they were unable to see the devices due to strong currents and poor visibility.
