The “black box” flight recorder for the missing AirAsia Flight QZ8501 has been retrieved from the Java Sea.

AirAsia Black Box Found

Over the weekend, search teams had discovered the location of the black box, but inclement weather prevented them from retrieving the black box until Monday morning local time.

“At 7:11, we succeeded in lifting the part of the black box known as the flight data recorder,” Fransiskus Bambang Soelistyo, head of the national search and rescue agency, said, reported the U.K. Guardian.

Soelistyo indicated that the other black box contains the cockpit voice recorder. It has been found 20 meters away from the location where the flight recorder was retrieved. However, divers have yet to remove it from the water.

“[The cockpit voice recorder] seems to be under a wing, which is quite heavy,” said Supriyadi, operations coordinator for the search and rescue agency. “So we will use air bags to lift it. This will be done tomorrow.”

Tatang Kurniadi, the head of the committee, believes that the black box is in good condition and will be able to inform investigators about what happened in the final moments leading up to the flight’s crash. Though it’s a quick process to get the information off of the black box, it could take up to a month for investigators to read all of the data.

AirAsia Flight QZ8501 went down on Dec. 28 with 162 passengers and crew aboard.