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AirAsia tail section located, blackbox still missing

Piecing together: Two crew members of the KRI Bung Tomo-357 examine debris from crashed AirAsia flight QZ8501 before it is handed to the National Committee on Transportation Safety at Juanda International Airport in Surabaya, East Java, on Wednesday

Hans Nicholas Jong (The Jakarta Post)
Jakarta
Thu, January 8, 2015

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AirAsia tail section located, blackbox still missing

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span class="inline inline-center">Piecing together: Two crew members of the KRI Bung Tomo-357 examine debris from crashed AirAsia flight QZ8501 before it is handed to the National Committee on Transportation Safety at Juanda International Airport in Surabaya, East Java, on Wednesday. Antara/Eric Ireng

The discovery of the tail section of AirAsia QZ8501'€™s Airbus A320-200 jet has raised hope that the aircraft'€™s blackboxes will soon be recovered and used by the country'€™s National Transportation Safety Committee (KNKT) to determine the cause of the crash.

The discovery of the jet'€™s tail, marked with part of the airline logo, was made early Wednesday when the ship KN Geo Survey detected the item in the waters of the Karimata Strait, which separates the Bangka Belitung Islands from Kalimantan, said National Search and Rescue Team (Basarnas) chief Air Chief Marshal FH Bambang Soelistyo.

'€œAt 5 a.m. our Geo Survey ship found the object, which measured 10 by 5 by 3 meters, using its side-scan sonar system and then the image from the side-scan sonar was confirmed by a multibeam echosounder,'€ he told a press conference at his office in Kemayoran, Central Jakarta.

A side-scan sonar system is used to create an image of large areas of the sea floor, while an echosounder is used to determine the depth of water and the nature of the seabed.

After the detection of the image, the joint search and rescue (SAR) team initially planned to only deploy a remotely operated vehicle (ROV) to get a clearer image of the tail section to confirm if the part belonged to the crashed aircraft, Soelistyo said.

'€œThen I asked about the weather conditions there and they turned out to be conducive. Therefore, we dispatched more divers to start the operation [to get a clearer image]. As a result, I was able to get confirmation at 10:30 a.m. of the result of the finding,'€ he said.

Images taken by divers show the letters '€œPK-AXC'€, which was the registration code of the aircraft, as well as '€œAi'€ from '€œAirAsia'€.

The exact location of the tail section is within the second priority zone of the search operation. The second priority zone, which is 10 by 10 nautical miles in size, is outside the initial search area.

Former KNKT investigator Ruth Hanna Simatupang said the discovery of the tail section could make it easier for the SAR team to locate the plane'€™s blackboxes.

The blackboxes contain the cockpit voice recorder (CVR) and flight data recorder (FDR), two important elements for the investigation into the accident.

'€œ[The blackboxes are kept] at the bottom part of the tail section of the plane,'€ Ruth told The Jakarta Post on Wednesday. '€œ[But the boxes] could be detached from their place from the crash.'€

Following the discovery, Basarnas came up with a new plan to retrieve the blackboxes, suspected to be not far from the location of the tail section of the downed plane.

'€œWe have to immediately look [for the blackboxes] from the location of the tail with a pinger locator so that we can determine where the blackboxes are,'€ he said.

Six ships were immediately stationed within a range of 2 nautical miles of the location of the tail to start working on a plan to retrieve the blackboxes, as well as the plane'€™s fuselage.

The location of the tail section has been marked with buoys, while divers have made attempts to retrieve samples from the discovered parts but they failed because of strong currents.

Also on Wednesday, the East Java Police'€™s Disaster Victim Identification (DVI) team identified eight more bodies found near the site where the AirAsia jet was thought to have crashed. The bodies were earlier designated with the numbers B007, B010, B011, B012, B014, B017, B023 and B032.

'€œBased on primary identification data, such as teeth and matching DNA with the father, the body labeled B007 is Ratri Sri Andriyani, a 30-year-old woman who lived in Surabaya [East Java],'€ the head of East Java Police'€™s medical and health department, Brig. Gen. Budiyono, told a press briefing on Wednesday in Surabaya.

The bodies labeled B011 and B012 were said to be those of Jou Christine Yuanita and Soetikno Sia, respectively.

Jou Christine Yuanita was a 62-year-old female, while Soetikno Sia was a 60-year-old male. Both lived in Surabaya.

The body labeled B010 was that of Ruth Natalia Made Puspitasari, a 26-year-old female from the East Java city of Blitar.

'€œThe body labeled B014 is Indah Juliansih, a 44-year-old woman from Surabaya. We found matching antemortem and postmortem data and we also found a necklace with a pendant with the initial L on her body, which the family confirmed belonged to Indah,'€ he said, adding that B017 was a 17-year-old male student named Nico Giovani from Surabaya.

The bodies numbered B023 and B032 were those of Rudy Soetjipto, a 54-year-old from Malang, and Stephanie Yulianto, a 14-year-old from Probolinggo [East Java].

So far, the police have identified 24 of the 40 bodies that have been recovered from the Karimata Strait.

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