The flight recorders from an Indonesian airliner that crashed on New Year's Day with 102 people on board have been recovered, officials say.

The discovery of the so-called black boxes comes after a US-operated ship arrived recently to help the search.

The Adam Air Boeing 737 was flying between Java and Sulawesi when it came down off the Sulawesi coast in one of Indonesia's worst air disasters.

The body of the plane is believed to be at a depth of 1,700m (5,600ft).

Despite a massive search, no bodies have ever been found although some wreckage made its way to the surface in the weeks following the crash.

While a signal from the black boxes was thought to have been heard soon after the crash, their retrieval has been held up by disagreements between the government and the airline over who should pay for it.

False Leads

"They have retrieved two black boxes," Tatang Kurniadi, of the National Transportation Safety Commission, said on August 28.

He said the data recorders - which include vital information about the flight and conversations in the cockpit - had been sent to Makassar port in Sulawesi and would be heading to the US for analysis.

"God willing they are still readable," he was quoted by the Associated Press as saying.

He was speaking after a salvage ship operated by US firm Phoenix International joined the search off Sulawesi island recently.

The plane disappeared after battling strong winds and twice changing course during a flight from Surabaya in Java to Manado in northern Sulawesi on January 1, 2007.

A massive air, land and sea operation got under way with several other countries offering help with the search.

But the hunt was hampered by bad weather as well as false leads. The government had to apologise for erroneously saying, soon after the plane's disappearance, that the wreckage had been found.