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Bambang Soelistyo, the chief of Basarnas, Indonesia's search and rescue agency, told reporters in Jakarta recovery teams found the tail of the plane in the Java Sea. "We have successfully obtained part of the plane that has been our target. The tail portion has been confirmed found," he said. AirAsia group chief executive Tony Fernandes acknowledged the announcement in a post on his Twitter account. "I am led to believe the tail section has been found. If right part of tail section then the black box should be there," he tweeted. "We need to find all parts soon so we can find all [our] guests to ease the pain of our families. That still is our priority."
Flight QZ8501 was carrying 162 people when it plunged into the water off Borneo island on December 28, about 40 minutes into a two-hour flight from Indonesia's second-biggest city Surabaya en route to Singapore. Despite a huge recovery operation assisted by various countries, progress has been patchy, with poor weather conditions hampering the search. Forty bodies and debris from the plane have been plucked from the surface of the waters off Borneo, but strong winds and high waves have prevented divers from reaching larger pieces of suspected wreckage detected by sonar on the sea floor.
The search for wreckage had been focused on an area about 90 nautical miles off Borneo, where ships using sonar located five large objects believed to be parts of the plane – the largest about 18 metres long – in shallow water on Sunday. Air Marshal Soelistyo said a total of 12 objects had now been found, but he did not confirm whether all were parts of the aircraft. He said the tail section was found in a different area to that mentioned in previous reports. "It wasn't found in the area that was mentioned in the media the other day," he said.
Parts of fuselage thought to be among wreckage
An official said Friday the pings appeared to be coming from an area on the sea floor separate from the tail section where the voice and data recorders were located. The recorders may offer essential information about the doomed flight. The tail section of the plane was located Wednesday on the sea bed about 30 kilometers from the plane's last known location at a depth of around 30 meters.
Indonesian navy divers prepare operations to lift the tail of AirAsia Flight 8501 in Java sea, Indonesia
The Airbus 320 vanished from radar screens over the northern Java Sea less than halfway into a two-hour flight from Indonesia's second-biggest city of Surabaya to Singapore. There were no survivors among the 162 people on board. Only 46 bodies have been recovered so far.
Authorities hope most of the rest of the victims can be recovered from the several large pieces of wreckage on the ocean floor. Before takeoff and during the last moments of the flight, the pilots requested to fly at a higher altitude to avoid a storm. The request was not approved because other planes were in the area.
Searchers Detect Signals from AirAsia Plane s Black Boxes
SEARCH FOR BLACK BOXES:
This week, divers and an unmanned underwater vehicle were able to capture the first images of the wreck. The tail of the Airbus A320, partially buried in the sand of the shallow waters, provided a boost to searchers. Officials are confident that the cockpit voice and flight data recorders are still in the aircraft's rear, and experts hope to use a crane or a lifting balloon to hoist the wreckage from the seabed.
CRASH INVESTIGATION:
It remains unclear what caused Flight 8501 to go down. The last contact the pilots had with air traffic control indicated they were entering stormy weather. They asked to climb from 32,000 feet (9,753 meters) to 38,000 feet (11,582 meters) to avoid threatening clouds, but were denied permission because of heavy air traffic above them. Four minutes later, the plane dropped off the radar. Floating bodies and pieces of debris were found about 10 kilometers (6 miles) from the last point of contact. The black boxes are key to the investigation.
STATUS OF THOSE MISSING:
So far, 48 of the 162 passengers and crew on board the plane have been recovered, with four new bodies discovered Friday. A few have been found floating while strapped to their seats, but officials say many of those still missing are likely entombed in the fuselage. The bodies are sent to Surabaya for identification and handed over to their families for burial, but the process is becoming more difficult due to decomposition.
CRASH LOCATION:
The plane went down in the Java Sea, with bodies and wreckage found about 160 kilometers (100 miles) from Pangkalan Bun on Borneo island, the closest town. The area is being lashed by seasonal rains, causing big waves and murky runoff from rivers that have hampered divers, helicopters and equipment being used to search for the plane. Ships with sonar detectors have identified several large chunks of what is believed to be the plane's body on the ocean floor, but visuals have not been captured.
News from The Associated Press
The red metal chunk, with the word "Asia" written across it, was brought to the surface using inflatable balloons. It was not immediately clear whether the cockpit voice and flight data recorders - located in the plane's rear - were inside this piece or had detached when the Airbus A320 plummeted into the sea Dec. 28. Their recovery is essential to finding out why it crashed. The debris was hoisted from a depth of about 30 meters (100 feet), and local TV footage showed it resting on a ship. Intermittent underwater ping-like sounds were picked up Friday about a kilometer (half a mile) from where the tail section was located, but it was unclear whether they were coming from the recorders. It was possible the signals were coming from another source.
No metal was detected at the ping location, and Nurcahyo Utomo, a National Commission for Transportation Safety investigator, said the sounds could not be confirmed. The discovery of the tail on the ocean floor earlier in the week was a major breakthrough in the slow-moving search, which has been hampered by seasonal rains, choppy seas and blinding silt from river runoff. But Suryadi Bambang Supriyadi, operation director of Indonesia's national search and rescue agency, said Saturday that he was still focused on finding the main section of fuselage where most of the bodies are believed to be entombed. Several large objects have been spotted in the area by sonar, but they have not yet been explored underwater. "This is what the families have been waiting for," he said. "They have been crying for 14 days."
Rescuers wave at an Indonesian Air Force helicopter near portion of AirAsia Flight 8501 after it was recovered from the sea floor on the deck of a rescue ship on the Java Sea, Saturday, Jan. 10, 2015. Investigators searching for the crashed plane's black boxes lifted the tail portion of the jet out of the Java Sea on Saturday, two weeks after it went down, killing all 162 people on board.
The last contact the pilots had with air traffic control, about halfway into their two-hour journey from Surabaya, Indonesia, to Singapore, indicated they were entering stormy weather. They asked to climb from 32,000 feet (9,753 meters) to 38,000 feet (11,582 meters) to avoid threatening clouds, but were denied permission because of heavy air traffic above them. Four minutes later, the plane dropped off the radar.
Four additional bodies were recovered Friday - two of them still strapped in their seats on the ocean floor - bringing the total to 48. Meanwhile, Transportation Minister Ignasius Jonan cracked down on five airlines Friday, temporarily suspending 61 flights because they were flying routes on days without permits. Earlier, all AirAsia flights from Surabaya to Singapore were stopped after it was discovered that the low-cost carrier was not authorized to fly on Sundays. Jonan also sanctioned nine more officials for allowing the AirAsia plane to fly without permits, bringing the total to 16.
News from The Associated Press
