One of the two flight recorders from the crashed Lion Air jet has been recovered, and could be critical to establishing why the new plane fell from the sky, said the head of Indonesia's National Transportation Safety Committee.
Ground staff lost touch with flight JT610 of Indonesian budget airline Lion Air just 13 minutes after the Boeing 737 MAX 8 took off early on Monday from Jakarta, on its way to the tin-mining town of Pangkal Pinang.
There were no survivors.
"We found one of the black boxes," Soerjanto Tjahjono told AFP.
"We don't know yet whether it's the FDR (flight data recorder) or CVR (cockpit voice recorder)."
The devices record information about the speed, altitude and direction of the plane, as well as flight crew conversations.
They could be a key piece of evidence in determining why the Boeing-737 MAX 8, which went into service just a few months ago, plunged into the Java Sea off Indonesia's northern coast, killing 189 people.
Images from the crash site showed two divers swim to a support vessel and place an orange-coloured device into a plastic tub, which was then carried onto the boat.
Despite usually being known as black boxes, the devices are typically bright orange.
Authorities picked up the box's signals below the water's surface on Wednesday, but were unable to get to the device immediately because of rough seas and strong currents.
