Following a difficult two week search slowed by intermittent bad weather, Indonesian authorities announced on Sunday that the black boxes of the crashed AirAsia plane had been located, according to a Channel NewsAsia report.
Search vessels detected strong ping signals transmitted by Flight 8501's black boxes, or the cockpit voice recorder and flight data recorder.
“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 official at Indonesia's transport ministry.
Indonesian navy divers found the recorders at a depth of 30 to 32 meters.
While the black boxes are expected to be recovered on Monday morning, the devices are trapped between bits of wreckage, complicating retrieval.
If moving parts of the wreckage proves unsuccessful, the search crew plans on using inflatable balloons to lift a portion of the plane's main body in order to access the devices.
The retrieval of the crucial black boxes could help provide a definitive answer on what caused the December 28th which took the lives of all 162 people aboard.
