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AirAsia crash: 'Pings' detected in search for missing plane's black boxes
AirAsia crash: Search teams detect 'pings' from plane's black box location beacon signal
(35 minutes later)
Indonesia search and rescue teams hunting for the wreck of an AirAsia passenger jet have detected pings in the search for the black box flight recorders.
Teams looking for the black box flight recorder of downed AirAsia flight QZ8501 have detected signal “pings” from its location beacon, Indonesian officials have said.
The pings were heard near where the plane's tail was found, 12 days after the aircraft went missing with 162 people on board.
The Airbus A320 plane went missing 12 days ago on 28 December around half way into a two hour flight between Indonesia’s second largest city or Surabaya and the city-state of Singapore.
Indonesia AirAsia Flight QZ8501 vanished from radar screens on December 28, less than half way into a two-hour flight from Indonesia's second-biggest city of Surabaya to Singapore. There were no survivors.
Black box location beacons are battery powered and if maintained properly should last at least a month after their activation on contact with water.
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.
Santoso Sayogo, an investigator at Indonesia’s National Transportation Safety Committee, said the black box recorders appeared to no longer be in the plane’s tail.
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.
Pilot and co-pilot of the Indonesian air force keep a look out during search and rescue operations for the missing AirAsia flight QZ8501 "We received an update from the field that the pinger locator already detected pings," he told the Reuters news agency.
Santoso Sayogo, an investigator at the National Transportation Safety Committee, said it appeared that the flight recorders were no longer in the tail.
"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."
“We received an update from the field that the pinger locator already detected pings,” he told Reuters.
The black box flight recorder should contain details of the plane's last moments and shed light on why it crashed.
“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.”
It contains a battery-powered location beacon to help find it in the event of a crash.
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 metres.
The plane’s tail section was identified on Wednesday after it was spotted by an Indonesian navy patrol boat at the weekend.
Indonesian search teams loaded lifting balloons on to helicopters on Friday ahead of an operation to raise the tail.
It is partly submerged on the sea bed, 30m below sea level, and around 30km away from the plane’s last known location.
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.
Recovery teams were today seen loading specialist balloons onto helicopters, which will be used to try and lift the tail section off the seabed.
“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.”
"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," Fransiskus Bambang Soelistyo, the head of Indonesia’s search and rescue agency said.
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.
He confirmed that looking for victims’ bodies was the main priority ahead of searching for the plane’s black box.
“Looking for victims is still our main priority besides the black box,” he said.
AirAsia’s licence to fly the route taken by QZ8501 has been suspended after authorities said it did not have proper authorisation to run flights on a Sunday, when the accident took place.
Relatives of the victims have urged authorities to make finding the remains of their loved ones the priority.
The cause of the crash is still unknown but Indonesia’s national weather forecasting service says that seasonal storms are likely to be a factor.
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 licence, 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.
