Search teams hear pings in AirAsia black box search

Indonesia search and rescue teams hunting for the wreck of an AirAsia passenger jet detected pings in their efforts to find the black box recorders on Friday, 12 days after the plane went missing with 162 people on board, an official said.

Indonesia AirAsia Flight QZ8501 vanished from radar screens on Dec. 28, less than half way into a two-hour flight from Indonesia's second-biggest city of Surabaya to Singapore. There were no survivors.

While the cause of the crash is not known, the national weather bureau has said seasonal tropical storms common in the area were likely to be a factor.

The Airbus A320-200 carries the black box cockpit voice and flight data recorders near the tail section. Officials had warned, however, that they could have become separated from the tail.

Santoso Sayogo, an investigator at the National Transportation Safety Committee, said it appeared that the black box was no longer in the tail.

"We received an update from the field that the pinger locator already detected pings," he said.

"We have our fingers crossed it is the black box. Divers need to confirm. Unfortunately it seems it's off from the tail. But the divers need to confirm the position."

The tail was found on Wednesday, upturned on the ocean floor about 20 miles from the plane's last known location at a depth of about 100 feet.

Indonesian search teams loaded lifting balloons on to helicopters on Friday ahead of an operation to raise the tail.

Relatives of the victims have urged authorities to make finding the remains of their loved ones the priority.

Forty-six bodies and debris from the plane have been gathered from the surface of the waters off Borneo, but strong winds and high waves have hampered efforts to reach larger pieces of suspected wreckage detected by sonar on the sea floor.

Reuters