A black box of the Boeing 737 found at sea by the navy.

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AFP

Three days after the crash of a Boeing 737 in the open sea, Indonesia announced on Tuesday that it had brought to the surface one of the aircraft's two black boxes.

Sixty-two passengers and crew were on board at the time of the accident.

"The FDR (Flight data recorder, which records flight parameters) has been found," Transport Minister Budi Karya Sumadi told reporters, which should help investigators understand the causes of the accident which occurred within minutes after take off from Jakarta on Saturday.

The plane did not explode

Divers are engaged on Tuesday in a race against time to bring the debris to the surface.

Sriwijaya Air's Boeing 737-500 suddenly fell some 10,000 feet (3,000 meters) in less than a minute and plunged into the Java Sea.

The authorities have not yet given any clues as to what could have caused the fall of this 26-year-old aircraft just minutes after takeoff.

An Indonesian Transportation Safety Agency investigator explained that the crew did not issue a distress signal before the crash and the plane was likely still intact when it hit the water.

The chief of the rescue services Soerjanto Tjahjono confirmed this analysis on Tuesday, stressing that the debris was in a fairly small area when it would have been scattered in the event of an explosion in flight.

"The size (of the area) corresponds to the assumption that the plane did not explode before reaching the water."

And "the damage to the blades of the recovered reactor also shows that the engine was still running" at the time of the crash.

According to aviation specialists, flight data indicates that the aircraft deviated sharply from its intended path before crashing down.

They point out that the investigation into the causes of the accident could take months.

This is the first fatal accident involving Sriwijaya since the company's inception in 2003.

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