Pings detected in search for AirAsia jet's black box

The black box, one of two flight recorders from the Rio-Paris Air France flight, AF447, an Airbus 330 which crashed in 2009, is carrying to be displayed for the media before a news conference at the BEA headquarters in Le Bourget, northern Paris, in this file photo taken May 12, 2011.[Photo/Agencies]

JAKARTA/PANGKALAN BUN - Indonesia search and rescue teams hunting for the wreck of an AirAsia passenger jet detected pings in their efforts to find the black box recorders on Friday, 12 days after the plane went missing with 162 people on board, an official said.

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.

The Airbus A320-200 carries the black box 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 black box was 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 metres.

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