The tail section of AirAsia Flight QZ8501 was lifted from the Java Sea on Saturday, but the plane’s cockpit voice and flight recorders, or “black boxes,” were not found.
Indonesian officials said the devices were not with the recovered section.
The plane’s black boxes will likely be found in “a few days,” the crash’s chief investigator said, after searchers were able to hear more pings, even if they haven’t yet pinpointed where they came from.
The investigator, Mardjono Siswosuwarno, told CNN that smaller boats picked up several pings emanating from roughly 500 meters from where the commercial jet’s tail was found.
“I think we will be able to find the black boxes in a few days, because the location where pings were detected is not very far from the tail,” Siswosuwarno said.
<img alt=”A portion of the tail section of AirAsia Flight QZ8501 is seen on Saturday, January 10, on the deck of a rescue ship after it was recovered from the Java Sea. The flight had 162 people on board when it lost contact with air traffic control on December 28.” class=”media__image” itemprop=”image” src=”http://i2.cdn.turner.com/cnnnext/dam/assets/150110074419-01-airasia-0110-super-169.jpg”>
Unlike Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 — which went missing last March and still hasn’t been located — remnants of Flight QZ8501 were spotted within days.
More recently, a search vessel detected pings like those that might come from the black boxes, Indonesian armed forces head Gen. Moeldoko said. Batteries that send out the pings last 30 days. It has been 13 days since the AirAsia plane fell into the sea.
But there was caution about these signals, since the sound could be emanating from other sources — as happened with Malaysia Airlines Flight 370.
After being spotted earlier this week, onlookers clapped as an underwater balloon started heaving a submerged tail section onto an awaiting ship.
That ship, the Crest Onyx, will take it toward Kumai harbor and eventually to shore.
That’s where investigators will examine the tail and look for the black boxes.
A total of 48 bodies have been recovered so far, according to Indonesia’s search and rescue agency.
The vast majority of the people on AirAsia QZ8501 were Indonesian. There were also citizens of Britain, France, Malaysia, Singapore and South Korea.
source: edition.cnn.com
STUDIO 3 NEWCASTLE AUSTRALIA 
