A day after searchers raised the tail section of the AirAsia plane that crashed into the Java Sea, more pings were heard Sunday from the missing flight and data recorders.
"We have detected a signal at one location where we believe it is a signal from the black box. We have checked the site twice using the pinger locator that we have on ship Baruna Jaya. Initially we wanted to lower the ROV (underwater device) but was not allowed by the Search and Rescue agency because it was feared would cause damage in the area so the search team decided to send divers to search [for the black box]," said Muhammad Ilyas, Head of Marine Survey Technology at Indonesia Technology Agency.
The tail was brought to the sea's surface on Saturday using floatation devices, but Indonesian investigators did not find the black box recorders inside. Their recovery is key to learning why the plane crashed on December 28, killing all 162 people on board.
Searchers first detected ping signals from the black boxes of Flight 8501 on Friday, but officials said the boxes seemed to be separated from the tail section.
The tail was located Wednesday on the sea bed at a depth of around 30 meters about 30 kilometers from the plane's last known location.
The Airbus 320 vanished from radar screens over the northern Java Sea less than halfway into a two-hour flight from Indonesia's second-biggest city of Surabaya to Singapore.
Forty-eight bodies have been recovered so far.
Authorities hope most of the rest of the victims can be recovered from the several large pieces of wreckage that have been detected on the ocean floor.
Before takeoff and during the last moments of the flight, the pilots requested to fly at a higher altitude to avoid a storm. The request was not approved because other planes were in the area.
Some material for this report came from AP and Reuters.
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