“My analysis is, based on the wreckage found and other findings, the plane experienced an explosion before it hit the water,” Suryadi Bambang Supriyadi, operations coordinator at the National Search and Rescue Agency, told reporters.

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,” said Mr Supriyadi.

However there is no official confirmation of the tragic events that unfolded as flight QZ8501 crashed into the Java Sea, as an investigator at the National Transport Committee refuted the claims.

“There is no data to support that kind of theory,” said Santoso Sayogo.

COCKPIT VOICE RECORDER FOUND

Indonesian divers have found the voice recorder from the downed AirAsia plane just hours after retrieving the black box flight recorder from the sea.

The voice recorder — which will hold vital clues to the cause of the crash — has not yet been retrieved from the Java Sea.

Earlier, officials confirmed that Indonesian Navy divers had retrieved the black box flight recorder from the AirAsia plane, which crashed in the Java Sea a fortnight ago with 162 people aboard.

The retrieval is a major breakthrough in the slow-moving hunt to understanding what brought down Flight 8501 on December 28.

Henry Bambang Soelistyo, chief of Indonesia’s search and rescue agency, says the flight data recorder was brought to the surface by four divers early on Monday morning.

“I received information from the National Transport Safety Committee chief that at 7.11 am, we succeeded in bringing up part of the black box that we call the flight data recorder,” Bambang Soelistyo told reporters.

Divers began to zero in on the site a day earlier, after picking up intense pings from its beacons.

But they were unable to get a visual on it due to strong currents and poor visibility.

Divers located the black box in the early hours of Monday but failed to retrieve it immediately from the seabed because it was stuck under debris from the main body of the plane.

Earlier, officials confirmed that the recorders had been located.

“The navy divers in Jadayat state boat have succeeded in finding a very important instrument, the black box of AirAsia QZ8501,” said Tonny Budiono, a senior ministry official.

The recorders were at a depth of 30-32 metres, he said in a statement.

“However, if this effort fails, then the team will lift part of the main body using the same balloon technique used earlier to lift the tail,” Budiono added.

After a frustrating two-week search often hampered by bad weather, officials earlier on Sunday raised hopes by reporting that strong ping signals had been detected by three vessels involved in the search.

Those signals were coming from the seabed less than one kilometre from where the tail of the plane was found, Malaysian Navy chief Abdul Aziz Jaafar said in a post on Twitter. Malaysia’s Navy is helping in the search.

The Indonesian meteorological agency has said stormy weather likely caused the Airbus A320-200 to crash as it flew from the Indonesian city of Surabaya to Singapore on December 28.

But a definitive answer is impossible without the black box, which should contain the pilots’ final words as well as various flight data.

THE VICTIMS: 48 BODIES FOUND

S.B. Supriyadi, a director with the National Search and Rescue Agency, told reporters earlier in the day that an object believed to be the plane’s main body had also been detected near the source of the pings.

The search, which has involved US, Chinese and other international naval ships, has recovered 48 bodies so far.

Supriyadi said many bodies were believed trapped in the cabin, so reaching that part of the wreckage was also a top priority.

The tail of the plane, with its red AirAsia logo, was lifted out of the water on Saturday using giant balloons and a crane.

It was brought by tugboat on Sunday to a port near the search headquarters, at Pangkalan Bun town on Borneo island.

All but seven of those on board the flight were Indonesian.

The bodies of a South Korean couple were identified on Sunday, but their 11-month-old baby remains unaccounted for, Indonesian authorities said.

The other foreigners were one Singaporean, one Malaysian, one Briton and a Frenchman -- co-pilot Remi Plesel. Their bodies have not been recovered.

While the cause of the crash is unknown, the disaster has once again placed Indonesia’s chaotic aviation industry under scrutiny.

Indonesian officials have alleged Indonesia AirAsia did not have a licence to fly the route on the day of the crash, although the airline rejects the claim.

Indonesia’s transport ministry quickly banned AirAsia from flying the Surabaya-Singapore route.

On Friday it suspended dozens more routes operated by five other domestic airlines for similar licence violations.