AirAsia jet’s tail retrieved
JAKARTA, Indonesia – An Indonesian search team Saturday pulled the tail section of the AirAsia plane that crashed last month from the Java Sea, but the aircraft’s data recorders were not inside, officials said.
Ships taking part in the search for the plane, an Airbus A320-200 that crashed Dec. 28 with 162 people aboard, began to detect signals from the plane’s flight data and cockpit voice and recorders Thursday. But officials have since said they believed the crash’s impact had dislodged the recorders from their original housing in the tail section.
“The search for black boxes is continuing,” Indonesia’s transportation minister, Ignasius Jonan, said at a news conference Saturday. “We are worried that in 30 days the signal will be lost. But the main focus remains the recovery of passengers, not the black boxes.”
The transportation minister was referring to the 30-day period after the crash during which the data recorders, or so-called black boxes, were expected to keep transmitting signals.
After being thwarted for days by severe underwater currents and near-zero visibility, Indonesian Navy divers were finally able to tie special lifting balloons to the tail section Saturday and attach them to the hook of a crane aboard one of the search ships, the Crest Onyx.
S.B. Supriyadi, the director of operations for Indonesia’s National Search and Rescue Agency, said Saturday that a survey ship had detected pings, apparently from the data recorders, about half a mile from where the tail wreckage was found, and at roughly the same depth of about 115 feet.
The plane, flying as Flight 8501, crashed less than an hour after taking off from the Indonesian city of Surabaya, bound for Singapore. As of Saturday afternoon, search teams had recovered 48 bodies, 29 of which had been identified.
The cause of the crash remains unclear, although weather has been cited as a probable factor. Officials have said they hoped the data recorders would help explain why the Airbus which lost contact with ground control after requesting permission to increase altitude, ultimately crashed into the Java Sea.