Black box pings from crashed AirAsia plane detected

Signals from the black boxes of an AirAsia jetliner, which crashed in the Java Sea off Indonesia's Central Kalimantan coast, have been detected, Military Commander General Moeldoko said on Friday.

"The location was estimated 300 meters from the initial point," Moeldoko was quoted as saying by the detik.com news website, referring to a location where the tail of Airbus A320-200 was found on Wednesday.

Moeldoko was onboard navy ship Banda Aceh used as a baseship to supervise the operation to lift up the tail, which he said was submerged in the seabed mud.

Indonesia has a plan to raise the tail of the Airbus A320-200 either with floating balloons or with a crane set in a navy vessel off the Central Kalimantan coast. Meanwhile, navigation ship Jadayat and members of the National Transportation Safety Committee (KNKT) would continue detecting pings that possibly emitted from the plane's block boxes.

So far, 48 bodies of victims have been recovered after two more corpses were found by an Indonesian ship on Friday. Divers were sent to retrieve the bodies that were strapped in their seats. But strong winds and high waves have hampered efforts to reach larger pieces of suspected wreckage detected by sonar on the sea floor.

"Some 41 bodies recovered in the operation have been moved to Surabaya, five were still kept in Pangkalan Bun hospital and two in a geosurvey ship at the moment," Bambang Soelistyo, head of Indonesia's National Search and Rescue Agency (BASARNAS), said.

Relatives of the victims have urged authorities to make finding the remains of their loved ones the priority.

Indonesia AirAsia, 49 percent owned by the 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 licence, saying it only had permission to fly the route on Mondays, Tuesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays.

Flight QZ8501 went down on Dec. 28 en route from Indonesia's second largest city of Surabaya to Singapore with 162 people aboard.

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

Indonesian Navt divers are preparing to sit in an inflatable boat before conducting operations to lift the tail of the crashed AirAsia flight QZ8501 in the Java sea, January 9, 2015. [Xinhua photo] 

An Indonesian search and rescue helicopter lands at the Indonesian Navy vessel KRI Banda Aceh during operations to lift the tail of AirAsia Flight 8501 in Java sea, Indonesia, Jan. 9, 2015. [Xinhua photo]

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