The tail of crashed AirAsia Flight QZ8501 jet has been found upturned on the sea bed about 30km from the plane’s last known location, Indonesia’s search and rescue agency said yesterday, indicating the crucial black box recorders might be nearby.
The plane vanished from radar screens over the northern Java Sea 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 among the 162 people on board.
Photo: EPA
“I can confirm that what we found was the tail part ... now [the team] is still desperately trying to locate the black box,” head of the search and rescue agency Fransiskus Bambang Soelistyo told a news conference in Jakarta.
Locating the tail has been a priority because the cockpit voice and flight data recorders that can provide vital clues on why the plane crashed were in the rear section of the Airbus.
“I am led to believe the tail section has been found,” AirAsia boss Tony Fernandes tweeted minutes after the announcement.
“If [it is the] right part of tail section, then the black box should be there... We need to find all parts soon so we can find all our guests to ease the pain of our families. That still is our priority,” he added.
In Pangkalan Bun, the southern Borneo town closest to the crash site, search and rescue agency coordinator Supriyadi told reporters the bad weather that has dogged the operation for 10 days had abated and divers were in the water.
However, as ships with acoustic “pinger locators” designed to pick up signals from the black box converged on the scene of the find, he said the tail section of the aircraft might not be fully intact.
“The location of the tail is relatively far from the point of last contact, about 30km,” he said. “The black box is located behind the door, to the right of the tail. There is a possibility that the tail and the back of the plane are broken up.”
Until investigators can examine the black box recorders the cause of the crash remains a mystery, but the area where the plane was lost is known for intense seasonal storms.
BMKG, Indonesia’s meteorological agency, said bad weather might have caused ice to form on the aircraft’s engines.
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