AirAsia Flight 8501 may have exploded before impact

The AirAsia plane that went down in the Java Sea likely "experienced an explosion" before hitting the water due to a significant change in air pressure, a senior government official says.

"My analysis is, based on the wreckage found and other findings, the plane experienced an explosion before it hit the water," S.B. Supriyadi, operations coordinator at the National Search and Rescue Agency, told reporters at the search headquarters on Borneo island.

He said the left side of the plane seemed to have disintegrated, pointing to a change in pressure that could have caused an explosion.

"The cabin was pressurised and before the pressure of the cabin could be adjusted, it went down — boom. That explosion was heard in the area," he said.

Indonesian divers yesterday retrieved the plane's flight data recorder, which is now being flown to Jakarta for analysis.

A second black box, the cockpit voice recorder, was spotted by divers about 20m from the first but they had not yet managed to retrieve it because it was trapped under wreckage, officials said.

Flight QZ8501 crashed on December 28 with 162 people on board during a short journey from the Indonesian city of Surabaya to Singapore.