PANGKALAN BUN, Indonesia—The tail section of AirAsia Flight 8501 was lifted from the floor of the Java Sea on Saturday and loaded on to a ship, but searchers continued hunting for the plane’s black box data recorders on the bottom of the sea.

Suyadi Bambang Supriyadi, director of operations for Indonesia’s search-and-recovery agency, said Saturday evening that the black boxes weren't in the tail section and that they fell into the sea.

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