Retrieving the device, which is designed to record all sounds on a plane’s flight deck, is expected to help investigators understand what went wrong aboard Flight QZ8501, which went down in the Java Sea last month with 162 people aboard.
The news agency Agence France-Press and local broadcaster Metro TV cited Indonesian officials saying the voice recorder had been recovered. CNN wasn’t immediately able to confirm the comments independently.
On Monday, searchers recovered the plane’s other so-called black box, the flight data recorder, which stores a vast amount of information about the aircraft’s performance, including air speed and cabin pressure.
The flight data recorder tells investigators what happened on a plane, but the cockpit voice recorder tells them why, said Mardjono Siswosuwarno, a senior official at Indonesia’s National Transportation Safety Committee, which is leading the investigation into the disaster.
–
Some officials have suggested that many of the remains of the people on board the plane are likely to be found with the fuselage.
A total of 48 bodies have so far been recovered from the sea, some of them still strapped into seats. Authorities have identified most of them.
A large majority of the people on Flight QZ8501 were Indonesian. There were also citizens of Britain, France, Malaysia, Singapore and South Korea.
CNN’s David Molko reported from Jakarta, and Jethro Mullen reported and wrote from Hong Kong.
