'Pings' heard near AirAsia wreckage
Print Edition
UNDERWATER ping-like sounds were heard yesterday in an area of the Java Sea where searchers are scouring for the crashed AirAsia plane, but it was unclear if they were from the all-important black boxes, an Indonesian official said.
The signals were picked up intermittently, but no metal was detected at the location, said Suryadi B. Supriyadi, the National Search and Rescue Agency’s operational director.
Nurcahyo Utomo, a National Commission for Transportation Safety investigator, said the sounds could not be confirmed.
A day earlier, photos and video confirmed that part of the plane’s tail had been found on the seabed — the first major wreckage seen since flight 8501 went down on December 28 with 162 passengers and crew on board.
The cockpit voice and flight data recorders are located in the rear, but Supriyadi said the pings were heard about a kilometer from the site of the tail. It was possible the signals were coming from another source.
Officials are hopeful the black boxes remained in the plane after the impact, and plan to hoist the tail from the seabed.
They are key to helping investigators understand what caused the Airbus A320 to go down about halfway into its flight from Surabaya, Indonesia, to Singapore.
The last contact the pilots had with air traffic control indicated they were entering stormy weather. They asked to climb to avoid threatening clouds, but were denied permission because of heavy air traffic above. Four minutes later, the plane dropped off the radar.
Four more bodies were recovered yesterday, taking the total found to 48.
Officials hope many of the remaining corpses will be found inside the fuselage, which has not yet been located by divers. Several large objects have been spotted in the area by sonar.
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