Co-pilot was 'flying AirAsia plane' when it crashed

The co-pilot of AirAsia Flight QZ8501 was flying the passenger jet when it crashed last month, killing all 162 people on board, officials say.

Mardjono Siswosuwarno, head investigator for Indonesia's National Transportation Safety Committee, said the plane was in good condition and that all crew members were properly certified.

He said the aircraft's flight recorder gave a "pretty clear picture" of what happened in the final moments before it crashed on December 28.

Last week, officials said the plane had been "climbing too quickly" before the crash.

The AirAsia plane that crashed into the sea last month was climbing at a speed "beyond normal" before stalling, radar data is thought to have shown.

According to the AFP news agency, the country's transport minister said: "The plane suddenly went up at a speed above the normal limit that it was able to climb to. Then it stalled."

Flight QZ8501 went missing on 28 December in stormy weather over the Java Sea.

Terrorism has been ruled out as a cause of the crash, but a search and rescue said last week that the plane had experienced an explosion before hitting the water.

The bodies of 53 of the aircraft's 162 passengers and crew have been recovered in search efforts so far.

The fuselage of the crashed AirAsia passenger jet which came down off the coast of Indonesia has been located by the Singapore military, the country's defence minister has said.

In a message posted to Facebook, Ng Eng Hen said he had been informed of the find by his navy chief, and posted underwater pictures.

A spokesman for the Indonesian navy said they had been able to capture images of wreckage which was 20 metres long, seven metres wide and three metres high - but said they had not yet been able to confirm whether it was from the jet.

Indonesia AirAsia's Flight QZ8501 went missing on December 28 after requesting a diversion due to bad weather.

Divers have retrieved the crashed AirAsia plane's second black box from the bottom of the Java Sea, giving investigators the essential tools they need to start piecing together what brought Flight 8501 down.

Reuters say the report said that the cockpit voice recorder was on board an Indonesian navy vessel and expected to be sent to the capital, Jakarta, for analysis.

The Airbus A320-200 airliner lost contact with air traffic control in bad weather on 28 December, less than halfway into a two-hour flight from Indonesia's second-biggest city of Surabaya to Singapore.

More: AirAsia jet 'experienced explosion before hitting water'

AirAsia Flight QZ8501 experienced an explosion before hitting water, one of Indonesia's search and rescue officials has said.

The official said that the wreckage indicates that there was a change in pressure in the jet which caused the likely explosion.

• AirAsia flight data recorder arrives on dry land

The flight data recorder retrieved from the wreckage of the crashed AirAsia plane arrived by helicopter at the search base in Indonesia today.

The recorder was transferred from salt water to a transparent container with fresh water upon arrival at the airport in Pangkalan Bun.

It will be handed over to the chief of the National Transportation Safety Committee before being transported to Jakarta for investigation.

Flight accident investigators have begun picking over the tail section of AirAsia Flight QZ8501, which went down on 28th December killing all 162 on board.

The tail section of the aircraft has been transported from the crash site in the Java Sea to Kumai Port in Central Kalimantan.

Dozens of Indonesian navy divers took advantage of calmer weather in the Java Sea on Monday to retrieve the flight recorder and search for the fuselage of the Airbus.

Indonesian navy divers have located the second black box data recorder from the AirAsia plane that crashed more than two weeks ago, but they have not yet been able to free it from debris on the floor of the Java Sea.

Suryadi Bambang Supriyadi, the operation co-ordinator at the National Search and Rescue Agency, said the cockpit voice recorder was located today just hours after officials announced the data flight recorder had been brought to the surface.

He said it is stuck under heavy wreckage, and divers are working to lift it.

A team of Indonesian navy divers has recovered the 'black box' flight data recorder from an AirAsia plane that crashed into the Java Sea two weeks ago, killing all 162 on board, Reuters have reported.

But an Indonesian government official also said that the cockpit voice recorder has not yet been found.

The cockpit voice and flight data recorders are vital to understanding what brought Flight 8501 down on 28 December, killing all 162 people on board.

The black box flight data recorder of the AirAsia flight that crashed in the Java Sea two weeks ago has been found and will be recovered on Monday, local media have reported.

AirAsia flight QZ8501 was travelling from Surabaya to Singapore went it crashed with 162 people on board.