INDONESIA-AIRPLANE/PINGS Indonesia official says 'pings' detected in search for AirAsia flight recorders

Record ID: 335660

  • Title: INDONESIA-AIRPLANE/PINGS Indonesia official says 'pings' detected in search for AirAsia flight recorders
  • Date: 9th January 2015
  • Summary: PANGKALAN BUN, INDONESIA (JANUARY 9, 2015) (REUTERS) ****WARNING CONTAINS FLASH PHOTOGRAPHY*** FLIGHT TAKING OFF HELICOPTER LANDING BODY IN HELICOPTER BODY BEING CARRIED OUT FROM HELICOPTER SEARCH TEAM SURROUNDING BODY SEARCH TEAM CARRYING BODY AWAY SEARCH TEAM/HELICOPTER SEARCH TEAM AT RUNWAY HELICOPTER ARRIVING SEARCH TEAM / HELICOPTER HELICOPTER SEARCH TEAM CARRYING WR
  • Embargoed: 24th January 2015 12:00
  • Keywords:
  • Location: Indonesia
  • Country: Indonesia
  • Topics: General
  • Reuters ID: LVA8WQKJYJZMC8WCQ9NAUZROT9YN
  • Story Text: Indonesian search and rescue teams hunting for the wreck of an AirAsia passenger jet detected pings in their efforts to find the black box flight recorders on Friday (January 9), 12 days after the plane went missing with 162 people on board.
    Indonesia AirAsia Flight QZ8501 vanished from radar screens on December 28, less than half way into a two-hour flight from Indonesia's second-biggest city of Surabaya to Singapore. There were no survivors.
    The search team has been focusing on retrieving the tail of the plane. The tail section is the location of the flight data and cockpit voice recorders, known as the black box, that carry vital information to help reveal the cause of the disaster.
    In a news conference at the search base in Pangkalan Bun, an official confirmed it appeared that the recorders were no longer in the tail.
    "The black box was not found in the cabin. We got indication that the black box may be separated from the tail because we detected signals about one kilometer away from the location of the tail," said Indonesia's National Search and Rescue Agency Operational Officer, Supriyadi.
    He added that certainty that the black box is not in the tail is based on the detection of pings away from the location of the tail.
    "Reports from field confirmed that pings are emitted from black box, because once the search teams are out of 500 meter range near the tail area they couldn't hear it. That's how the team confirmed that the signal was emitted from AirAsia jet," said Supriyadi.
    The tail was upturned on the sea bed about 30 km (20 miles) from the plane's last known location at a depth of around 30 metres.
    Forty-eight bodies and debris from the plane have been plucked from the surface of the waters off Borneo, but strong winds and high waves have hampered efforts to reach larger pieces of suspected wreckage detected by sonar on the sea floor.
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