AirAsia flight 8501: Divers detect pings from black box

The wreckage of AirAsia flight QZ8501. Photo / Getty Images

Indonesian divers have said they are hopeful that the black box from doomed AirAsia flight 8501 has been located.

Search teams are focused on finding the black box and retrieving bodies from the wreckage, and on Friday afternoon they reported detecting "pings" from the flight data recorder.

Santoso Sayogo, an investigator at the National Transportation Safety Committee, said that while divers needed to confirm the alerts were from the black box, "we have our fingers crossed".

"We received an update from the field that the pinger locator already detected pings," Mr Sayago told Reuters.

"We have our fingers crossed it is the black box. Divers need to confirm."

Indonesian authorities have warned that the black box, which is located in the tail in the Airbus A320-200, may have become separated during the crash.

"Unfortunately it seems it's off from the tail. But the divers need to confirm the position," Mr Sayago said.

Footage released by Indonesian authorities shows divers surrounding the submerged wreck, shining torches into the badly damaged hull, 30 metres under the surface of the Java Sea.

The flight data recorder, or black box, which is located in the back end of the plane, could prove crucial to determining the cause of the December 28 crash that killed all 168 people on board.

Lifting balloons were loaded onto helicopters in preparation of recovery efforts to lift the tail out of the Java Sea, despite worries that the black box may have been separated from the tail during the crash.

The footage was captured by the divers despite poor weather and murky water which has been hampering recovery efforts.

The footage shows elite divers holding a box to the exterior of the tail, which still has the identifying markers "PK" plane on its side.

An Indonesian Armed Forces Commander confirmed that a recovery of the tail is in progress, after signals from the black box, which only has 30 days of battery life, were detected yesterday.

Navy ships USS Sampson and USS Fort Worth have deployed helicopters and sonar devices into the Java Sea to aid the recovery operation off the coast of the Indonesian island of Borneo.

Only 43 bodies have been retrieved so far, as monsoon rains and winds have caused choppy sea conditions and blinding silt from river run-off, reducing visibility underwater and preventing the removal of large pieces of the wreckage.

Many of the other passengers are believed to be inside the wreckage of the plane's main cabin, which has not been located, due to strong currents moving debris around.

At two weeks, most corpses will sink, said Anton Castilani, head of Indonesia's disaster identification victim unit, and there were already signs of serious decomposition.

"Divers have reached the tail part but ... the visibility was below one metre so they only managed to retrieve various debris," said Bambang Soelistyo, chief of Indonesia's search and rescue agency.

"Now we are waiting for the speed of the current to ease. If it gets calmer later, they will go back to do another dive to determine whether the black boxes remained in the tail or were detached."

- Daily Mail