Indonesia retrieves flight data recorder

Pangkalan Bun, Indonesia

INDONESIAN divers on Monday retrieved the flight data recorder of the AirAsia plane that went down in the Java Sea with 162 people on board, a potential breakthrough in efforts to discover what caused the crash.

The recorder, one of two black boxes containing vital information, was brought to the surface early in the morning, said national search and rescue chief Bambang Soelistyo, after a fortnight-long frustrating search often hampered by bad weather.