AirAsia QZ8501: Indonesia's national search agency refuses to confirm reports of pings from jet's black box

Updated

Indonesia's national search and rescue agency has refused to confirm reports that electronic "pings" were detected from the black box recorder of a crashed AirAsia passenger jet.

Indonesia AirAsia flight QZ8501 was carrying 162 people when it 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.

Two Indonesian agencies have given contradictory reports as to whether recovery teams had heard the pings.

Indonesia's National Transportation Safety Committee told local media that locator sounds had been detected in the search for the plane's black box flight recorder.

There were also reports that the back box itself had been found.

But Indonesia's national search and rescue agency, Basarnas, which is in charge of the recovery operation, said it was not willing to confirm either of the reports.

The Airbus A320-200 carries the black box cockpit voice and flight data recorders near its tail section.

Officials earlier warned, however, that they could have become separated from the tail.

A ship was sent to the area where the electronic signals were reportedly detected.

Balloons deployed to help raise plane's tail

The tail was found on Wednesday, upturned on the sea bed about 30 kilometres from the plane's last known location at a depth of around 30 metres.

Indonesian search teams loaded lifting balloons on to helicopters on Friday ahead of an operation to raise the tail.

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

Forty-six 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.

Indonesia AirAsia, 49 per cent owned by the Malaysia-based AirAsia budget group, has come under pressure from the authorities in Jakarta since the crash.

The transport ministry suspended the carrier's Surabaya-Singapore licence, saying it only had permission to fly the route on Mondays, Tuesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays.

Flight QZ8501 took off on a Sunday, though the ministry said this had no bearing on the accident.

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.

ABC/Reuters

Topics: air-and-space, accidents, disasters-and-accidents, indonesia, singapore, asia

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