Reuters - Indonesia
search and rescue teams hunting for the wreck of an AirAsia passenger
jet detected pings in their efforts to find the black box flight
recorders on Friday, an official said, 12 days after the plane went
missing with 162 people on board
Indonesia AirAsia
Flight QZ8501 vanished from radar screens on Dec. 28, less than half way
into a two-hour flight from Indonesia's second-biggest city of Surabaya
to Singapore. There were no survivors
Forty-eight
bodies, including at least two still strapped to their seats, have been
found in waters off Borneo, but strong winds and high waves have
hampered efforts to reach larger pieces of suspected wreckage detected
by sonar on the sea floor
The
Airbus A320-200 carries the cockpit voice and flight data recorders
near the tail section. Officials had warned, however, that they could
have become separated from the tail
Santoso
Sayogo, an investigator at the National Transportation Safety
Committee, said it appeared that the flight recorders were no longer in
the tail.
"We received an update from the field that the pinger locator already detected pings," he told Reuters
"We
have our fingers crossed it is the black box. Divers need to confirm.
Unfortunately it seems it's off from the tail. But the divers need to
confirm the position."
The
tail was found on Wednesday, upturned on the sea bed about 30 km (20
miles) from the plane's last known location at a depth of around 30
meters.
Indonesian search teams loaded lifting balloons on to helicopters on Friday ahead of an operation to raise the tail
The head of the search and rescue agency, Fransiskus Bambang Soelistyo,
said he assumed the flight recorders were still in the tail and that
reports they had separated had yet to be confirmed
"The
divers are tying the tail with straps and then we will try (to lift it)
two ways - floating balloons combined with cranes, so that the tail
sector wouldn't be damaged," he told reporters. "Because we assume the
black box is in the tail sector."
He
said two bodies had been found still attached to their seats, with
local television reporting that one of the recovered seats was from the
cockpit
"Looking for victims is still our main priority besides the black box," he said
Relatives of the victims have urged authorities to make finding the remains of their loved ones the priority
Indonesia
AirAsia, 49 percent owned by the Malaysia-based AirAsia budget group,
has come under pressure from the authorities in Jakarta since the crash
The
transport ministry has suspended the carrier's Surabaya-Singapore
license, saying it only had permission to fly the route on Mondays,
Tuesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays
Flight QZ8501 took off on a Sunday, though the ministry said this had no bearing on the accident
While
the cause of the crash is not known, the national weather bureau has
said seasonal tropical storms common in the area were likely to be a
factor.
(Additional reporting by Nicholas Owen, Michael Taylor, Eveline
Danubrata, Wilda Asmarini and Nilufar Rizki in Jakarta, Kanupriya Kapoor
in Pangkalan Bun and Fransiska Nangoy in Surabaya; Writing by Nick Macfie
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