AirAsia jet tail lifted from sea

THE Indonesian Navy has lifted the tail section of the AirAsia jet that crashed into the Java Sea and will check it for the missing black box.

“We will transport it to a place where we can examine it,” navy spokesman First Admiral Manahan Simorangkir said yesterday. It is being taken by ship to Kumai Bay, about 1 000km southeast of Singapore.

The black box might not still be in the tail and military chief General Moeldoko ordered divers to watch underwater while the structure was lifted in case they could spot it, Oot Sudarma, an army sergeant, told the Kompas newspaper’s website. A ping that may be from the black box was detected 300m away from the tail, Indonesian news website Detik reported this week, citing Moeldoko.

Three days ago, authorities found the tail, which houses the cockpit voice recorder and the flight data recorder, together known as the black box.

The black box might explain why the plane, with 162 people on board, fell from the sky on December 28 while on a flight from Surabaya, Indonesia, to Singapore. Forty-eight bodies had been found so far, FH Bambang Sulistyo, head of the national search agency, told reporters in Jakarta on Friday. —