|
 Flight QZ8501 vanished from radar screens over the northern Java
Sea 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 among the 162 people on board.
"We've found the tail that has been our main target," Fransiskus
Bambang Soelistyo, head of the search and rescue agency, told a news
conference in Jakarta.
The tail was identified by divers after it was spotted by an
underwater machine using a sonar scan, Soelistyo said. He displayed
underwater photographs showing partial lettering on the sunken
object compared with a picture of an intact Airbus A320-200 in
AirAsia livery.
"I can confirm that what we found was the tail part from the
pictures," he said, adding that the team "now is still desperately
trying to locate the black box".
Indonesia's Minister for Maritime Affairs, Indroyono Soesilo, told
another news conference: "With the finding of the tail, six SAR
(search and rescue) ships are already at the location to search
within a radius of two nautical miles."
 Forty bodies and debris from the plane have been plucked from the
surface of the waters off Borneo, but strong winds and high waves
have been hampering divers' efforts to reach larger pieces of
suspected wreckage detected by sonar on the sea floor.
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 are located 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."
"PINGER LOCATORS"
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.
But, as ships with acoustic "pinger locators" designed to pick up
signals from the black box converged on the scene of the find, he
cautioned 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 30 km (20 miles)," 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."
[to top of second column] |
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, has said bad weather may have caused ice to
form on the aircraft's engines.
Indonesia AirAsia, 49 percent owned by Fernandes's Malaysia-based
AirAsia budget group, has come under pressure from the 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.
Fernandes however maintained that AirAsia had the required
permission. "What happened was purely an administrative error," he
said in an e-mail. "The process has become clear now."
AirAsia has said it is cooperating fully with the ministry's
investigations. That investigation would be completed by Friday
evening, the transport ministry said on Wednesday.
Indonesia has also reassigned some airport and air traffic control
officials who allowed the flight to take off and tightened rules on
pre-flight briefing procedures.
Indonesia is one of the world's fastest growing aviation markets and
its carriers, such as Lion Air and Garuda Indonesia, are among the
top customers for plane makers Airbus and Boeing.
But its safety record is patchy. The European Commission banned all
Indonesia-based airlines from flying to the European Union in 2007
following a series of accidents. Exemptions to that ban have since
been granted to some carriers, including Garuda and AirAsia.
(Additional reporting by Kanupriya Kapoor and Fergus Jensen in
Pangkalan Bun, Nicholas Owen, Wilda Asmarini, Eveline Danubrata,
Nilufar Rizki, Charlotte Greenfield, and Michael Taylor in Jakarta
and Fransiska Nangoy in Surabaya; Writing by Alex Richardson;
Editing by Nick Macfie and Raju Gopalakrishnan)
[© 2014 Thomson Reuters. All rights
reserved.] Copyright 2014 Reuters. All rights reserved. This material may not be published,
broadcast, rewritten or redistributed. |
