No black boxes found inside AirAsia tail
January 10, 2015
"We can confirm the black box is not in the tail," Suryadi Supriyadi, operations coordinator for Indonesia's National Search and Rescue Agency, told reporters on Saturday.
Experts have said the cockpit voice and flight data recorders in the aircraft's rear might have detached when AirAsia Flight 8501 crashed into the Java Sea on December 28. There were 162 people on board the flight en route to Singapore from the Indonesian city of Surbaya.
The recovery of the black boxes is crucial to finding the cause of the airliner's crash, said Indonesian military commander General Moeldoko.
Moeldoko added that the pings believed to be emerging from the black box were detected on Saturday.
"I am fully confident that the black boxes are still not far from the tail," he said.
The tail's discovery earlier this week was considered a major breakthrough in the slow-moving search operation, which has been hampered by rains and bad weather.
Forty-eight bodies have been recovered from the ocean, several of them still strapped into their seats. Officials are hopeful the remaining bodies will be found within the fuselage, which divers have so far been unable to locate.
shs/sms (Reuters, AP, dpa)