AirAsia
The tail section was brought to the surface with the help of an inflatable device.Twitter

The flight data recorder of the crashed AirAsia QZ8501 plane has been retrieved from the Java Sea, and the cockpit voice recorder has now been located on the sea bed. 

The black box of the downed plane was located on Sunday, and recovery operations began on Monday.

While the flight data recorder was retrieved early on Monday, the hunt was on for the cockpit voice recorder, which may hold crucial details of what transpired in the cockpit moments before the plane crashed. 

"I received information from the National Transport Safety Committee chief that at 07:11 am, we succeeded in bringing up part of the black box that we call the flight data recorder," Indonesia's search and rescue chief Bambang Soelistyo said, according to AFP. 

The black box, comprising the data recorder and voice recorder, is usually close to the tail section of the plane. 

While the plane's tail was lifted out of the sea on Saturday, the black box recorder was known to have been separated from the section. 

The data recorder will now be investigated to learn what went wrong on the flight before it crashed into the sea on 28 December. Since the recorder has been found in a good condition, the data can be analysed within two days, as per reports.