Black box found
Chief of Indonesia's National Transportation Safety Committee Kurniadi shows the black box from the Sukhoi Superjet-100 that crashed last week near the crash site of Cijeruk Reuters

The black box of the Russian jet that crashed in Indonesia on 9 May, 2012 has been found by a search team. Investigators may now be able to get clues to the cause of the crash which killed all the 45 people on board despite the plane having a veteran pilot.

"We found the black box at around 10 this morning (03:00 GMT)," said the search operations head Ketut Parwa, according to AFP. "It was found around 100 metres (328 feet) from where we located the tail," Parwa said.

The team of experts has been searching for the black box after the brand new Russian Sukhoi crashed in western Java in Indonesia. The searchers found the black box in a shattered and half burnt condition.

The bright orange colour of the box was also burnt off which made it harder to locate, said the officials.

The box will be handed over to the National Committee for Transportation Safety which is also backed by more than 70 Russian experts.

Although the officials did not confirm whether the damaged state of the black box would hinder their investigation, they said the memory module of the box is readable.

"It will take at least a week to download the data," the Associated Press quoted Mardjono Siswosuwarno, who is leading the probe, as saying. He said that the conversations need to be transcribed and translated which will not be made public.

There has been speculation that either bad weather or human error could have caused the plane crash.

Experts are of the opinion that it is difficult to fly above this region even for experienced pilots if they are unfamiliar with the area.

The flight carried potential buyers and journalists during its second flight and was seen to be Russia's re-entry into the aircraft business.

The Sukhoi Superjet-100 disappeared from radar 21 minutes after takeoff from the Halim Perdanakusuma Airport in Jakarta.

The Superjet project was a joint venture between the legendary Sukhoi and Italy's Alenia Aeronautica, which is part of the aerospace and defence giant Finmeccanica.

Russia