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Divers fail to recover black box from under piece of airliner’s wreckage

Indonesian divers found on Sunday a black box from the crashed AirAsia plane on the floor of the Java Sea

SINGAPORE, January 11. /TASS/. Indonesian divers found on Sunday a black box from the crashed AirAsia plane on the floor of the Java Sea, but have failed to recover it as it is under a big piece of wreckage from the crash, said a spokesman for the Indonesian Transport Ministry.

The spokesman, Tonny Budiono, said all obstacles had to be cautiously removed. If attempts to do this failed, part of the plane’s fuselage would be pulled to the surface with the use of inflatable devices, as this had been done with the tail section, he said.

However, it is still unclear what flight recorder is mentioned, as there are two different recorders on board the plane - the flight data recorder and the cockpit voice recorder.

It is expected that the operation to recover the black box will begin on Monday. Deciphering the data may take up to two weeks, but preliminary data may be obtained already in two days given that the box is not badly damaged.

Besides, rescuers will continue examining a large fragment believed to be the fuselage. Experts don’t rule out that bodies may be found inside.

A representative of the National Search and Rescue Agency said on Sunday that recovering the dead bodies was priority task for the rescuers, and search for the black boxes came as a second task.

Forty-eight bodies have been found in the sea off Borneo. Contact with the airliner carrying 162 people was lost during thundery weather on December 28, about 40 minutes after it took off on a flight from the Indonesian city of Surabaya to Singapore.