Air Asia plane tail found, raising hopes that black boxes have been located (Updated)
Indonesia said Wednesday it had found the tail of AirAsia Flight 8501, potentially marking a major step towards locating the plane's black boxes since they are usually housed there.
Indonesia said Wednesday it had found the tail of AirAsia Flight 8501, potentially marking a major step towards locating the plane's black boxes since they are usually housed there.
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These handout images released by Indonesia's National Search And Rescue Agency (BASARNAS) on January 7, 2015 show images believed to be of wreckage of ill-fated AirAsia flight QZ8501, photographed by divers working in the Java Sea. AFP PHOTO / BASARNAS
Thursday update
The US television network ABC quotes an Indonesian official as saying the that plane's tail has indeed been spotted but it is upside-down and buried in mud. If the black boxes are in the tail section, this could make them more difficult to retrieve.
Wednesday's story
Indonesia says crashed AirAsia plane tail found
Jakarta, Jan 7, 2015, AFP – Indonesia said Wednesday it had found the tail of AirAsia Flight 8501, potentially marking a major step towards locating the plane's black boxes and helping shed light on what caused it to crash into the sea ten days ago.
Search and rescue agency chief Bambang Soelistyo said he was sure of the discovery after seeing photographs of the underwater wreckage, on which the company logo could be seen.
The "black box" flight data recorders, crucial to determining the cause of the crash, are usually housed in an aircraft's tail.
"We have successfully obtained part of the plane that has been our target. The tail portion has been confirmed found," Soelistyo told reporters in Jakarta.
The plane vanished from radar screens during a storm on December 28 when it was flying from the Indonesian city of Surabaya to Singapore with 162 people on board, most of them Indonesian.
Despite a huge recovery operation assisted by various countries, progress has been patchy with poor weather conditions hampering the search. So far 39 bodies have been found, all of them floating on the sea. (The number of bodies retrieved has now reached 41 as of 18:00).
Members of an Indonesian search and rescue team coordinate operations prior to boarding an Indonesian Air Force Super Puma NAS332 helicopter to take part in a search for AirAsia flight QZ8501 at the Iskandar military airport in Pangkalan Bun on January 7, 2015. AFP PHOTO / ADEK BERRY
Indonesia alleges the plane was flying on an unauthorised schedule when it crashed and AirAsia has since been suspended from flying the Surabaya-Singapore route.
The country's transport ministry said earlier on Wednesday that it had fired one transport official and disciplined several others in a crackdown following the crash, as it investigates how the flight was able to depart without permission.
An initial report from the Indonesian meteorological agency BMKG has said weather was the "triggering factor" of the crash, with ice likely damaging the plane's engines.
But it remained unclear why other planes on similar routes were unaffected by the weather, and other analysts said there was not enough information to explain the disaster until the flight data recorders were recovered.
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