Jakarta.
Indonesia’s Search and Rescue Agency, or Basarnas, on Wednesday announced they
had recovered the tail from the wreck of AirAsia Flight QZ8501.
“We have a
picture of the part and we can confirm that it’s the tail,” Bambang Soelistyo,
chief of the Basarnas, told reporters at a press conference in Jakarta.
Soelistyo
said the picture — taken by one of the recovery divers — showed the piece on
the seabed with “AX” and “Air” visible on the side, which confirmed it was part
of the Indonesia AirAsia plane. The piece of the wreckage was about 10 meters
in length, five meters in width and three meters high, according to a report
from Detik.com quoting Bambang.
The tail is
the section where the crucial black box voice and flight data recorders are
located.
AirAsia CEO
Tony Fernandes has tweeted:
I am led to believe the tail section has been found. If right part of tail section then the black box should be there.
— Tony Fernandes (@tonyfernandes) January 7, 2015
The
A320-200 crashed into the Java Sea on Dec. 28 en route from Surabaya to
Singapore with 162 people on board. As of Wednesday morning, the total number
of bodies recovered was 40.
On Monday
Reuters reported a captain of an Indonesian Navy patrol vessel claimed to have
found the tail of the Indonesia AirAsia plane, but there was no confirmation.
Indonesia’s
meteorological agency, or BMKG, has suggested bad weather may have at least
partly caused the A320-200 to crash. Tropical storms are frequent near the
equator during the current wet season.
“The most
probable weather phenomenon was icing which can cause engine damage due to a
cooling process. This is just one of the possibilities that occurred based on
the analysis of existing meteorological data,” a BMKG report, released last
week, said.
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