Divers have located the black box that holds flight and data recorders of the Indonesia AirAsia plane that crashed into the Java Sea on December 28 with 162 people on board, an Indonesian government official said Sunday.
“The navy divers have found a very important object, the black box of AirAsia Flight QZ8501 under the depth of between 30 and 32 meters,” Tonny Budiono, team coordinator at the Directorate General for Sea Transportation of the Ministry of Transportation, said in a press statement.
The black box was found under the debris of the plane, the statement said, adding because the debris needs to be lifted first, objects will not be retrieved until Monday morning.
Earlier, Ridwan Djamaluddin, deputy chief of the Technology Development and Application Agency, said in a press statement pinger locater beacons of three Indonesian survey ships heard the pings at 10.25pm. Saturday in an area about 4.5 kilometres from where the jetliner’s tail section was discovered Wednesday.
“We keep listening to the pings and monitoring the coordinates,” he added, saying the ships, one from his agency and two others from private companies, formed a triangular formation above the location of the pings.
In a press conference later Sunday, Coordinating Minister for Maritime Affairs Dwiputro Indroyono Soesilo said two different kinds of pings were heard by the pinger locaters, both from 30-meter depths.
