AirAsia jet’s tail lifted from sea in search for black boxes

Yet despite pinger signals from the area, flight recorders are still missing, possibly buried in silt 30 metres below the surface.

Rescuers wave at an Indonesian Air Force helicopter near portion of AirAsia Flight 8501 after it was recovered from the sea floor on the deck of a rescue ship on the Java Sea on Januar 10. AP Photo

PANGKALAN BUN, Indonesia // A tail section from the crashed AirAsia plane became the first major piece of wreckage to be lifted off the seabed on Saturday, two weeks after Flight 8501 went down, killing all 162 people on board.

The red chunk of metal, with the word “Asia” written across it, was brought to the surface using inflatable balloons. It was not immediately clear whether the cockpit voice and flight data recorders – located in the plane’s rear – were inside this piece of the plane or had detached when the Airbus A320 plummeted into the sea on December 28.

Earlier, however, officials said it looked as if the recorders – which will be essential to understanding why the airline crashed – had become separated during the disaster.

“The divers looked for the black box but they didn’t find it,” said Suryadi Bambang Supriyadi, operation director of Indonesia’s national search and rescue agency. “But it has to be checked again. Lifted and checked again.”

The debris was hoisted from a depth of about 30 metres, and local TV footage showed it resting on a ship. Mr Supriyadi said it could take up to 15 hours to tow the tail to land.

Intermittent underwater ping-like sounds were picked up on Friday about a kilometre from where the tail section was located, but it was unclear whether they were coming from the recorders. It was possible the signals were coming from another source.

No metal was detected at the ping location, and Nurcahyo Utomo, a National Commission for Transportation Safety investigator, said the sounds could not be confirmed.

On Friday, Mr Supriyadi said that if the recorders had become separated from the tail then they could be covered in mud, making the search in the murky water that much more difficult.

“The pings can only be detected within a radius of 500 metres so it can be a large area to cover,” he said.

If and when the recorders are found and taken to the capital Jakarta for analysis, it could then take up to two weeks to download data, investigators said, although the information could be accessed in as little as two days if the devices are not badly damaged.

When the jet’s tail was discovered on the ocean floor a few days before, it marked a major breakthrough in the slow-moving search, which has been hampered by seasonal rains, choppy seas and blinding silt from river run-off.

But Mr Supriyadi said on Saturday that he was still focused on finding the main section of fuselage where most of the bodies are believed to be entombed. Several large objects have been spotted in the area by sonar, but they have not yet been explored underwater.

“This is what the families have been waiting for,” he said. “They have been crying for 14 days.”

While the cause of the crash is not known, the national weather bureau has said seasonal storms were likely to be a factor.

The last contact the pilots had with air traffic control, about halfway into their two-hour journey from Surabaya, Indonesia, to Singapore, indicated they were entering stormy weather. They asked to climb from 32,000 feet to 38,000 feet to avoid threatening clouds, but were denied permission because of heavy air traffic above them. Four minutes later, the plane dropped off the radar, without the pilots issuing a distress signal.

Four additional bodies were recovered on Friday – two of them still strapped in their seats on the ocean floor – bringing the total to 48.

Also on Friday, transportation minister Ignasius Jonan cracked down on five airlines, temporarily suspending 61 flights because they were flying routes on days without permits. Earlier, all AirAsia flights from Surabaya to Singapore were stopped after it was discovered that the low-cost carrier was not authorised to fly on Sundays.

Mr Jonan also sanctioned nine more officials for allowing the AirAsia plane to fly without permits, bringing the total to 16.

The Indonesian captain, a former air force fighter pilot, had 6,100 flying hours and the plane last underwent maintenance in mid-November, said the airline, which is 49 per cent owned by Malaysia-based budget carrier AirAsia.

The AirAsia group, including affiliates in Thailand, the Philippines and India, had not suffered a crash since its Malaysian budget operations began in 2002.

* Associated Press and Reuters