'Pings' detected in search for AirAsia black box

Indonesian 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 halfway 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 into 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 seafloor.

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 said.

"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 seabed about 30 kilometers from the plane's last known location at a depth of around 30 meters.

Indonesian search teams loaded lifting balloons onto helicopters on Friday ahead of an operation to raise the tail.

The head of the search and rescue agency, Fransiskus Bambang Soelistyo, said that 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 said.

"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, which is 49 percent owned by the Malaysia-based AirAsia budget group, has come under pressure from 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 a factor.

Of the 48 recovered bodies, "41 bodies recovered in the operation have been moved to Surabaya, five were still kept in Pangkalan Bun hospital and two in a geosurvey ship at the moment", Bambang Soelistyo said.

Reuters - Xinhua

(China Daily 01/10/2015 page11)