Indonesia confident AirAsia fuselage discovered, zero in on black box

The Globe and Mail ^ | January 11, 2015 | by KANUPRIYA KAPOOR AND CHARLOTTE GREENFIELD

[Oldeconomybuyer]

Indonesian search teams believe they have found the fuselage of an AirAsia airliner that crashed in the Java Sea two weeks ago, and divers hope calmer waters on Monday will allow them to retrieve the black box flight recorders.

Searchers have also been hearing pings, believed to be from the aircraft’s two black boxes near where the tail of the Airbus A320-200 aircraft tail was raised on Saturday.

Suryadi Bambang Supriyadi, operations coordinator for the National Search and Rescue Agency, said on Sunday a sonar scan had revealed an object measuring 10 meters by four meters by 2.5 meters on the sea floor.

“They suspect it is the body of the plane,” Mr. Supriyadi told Reuters in the town of Pangkalan Bun, the base for the search effort on Borneo.

“If it is the body of the plane then we will first evacuate the victims.”

Forty-eight bodies have been found in the Java Sea off Borneo.

[Oldeconomybuyer]

[CARTOUCHE]

Only a 30 foot section? Must have skipped like a rock and broke apart or perhaps the front end was crushed on impact with the water and only the rear 30 feet survived with the tail breaking off from the shock. Guess it would depend on what angle the plane struck the water.