Two days after an Indonesian Navy Captain said that he may have located AirAsia Flight QZ8501’s tail, Indonesia’s search and rescue chief has confirmed it saying they have found the crucial part of the crashed plane that contains black boxes – flight data recorder and cockpit voice recorder.
The tail section recovery means the investigators will now able to lay their hands upon the black boxes of the plane that hold vital clues to what might have happened to the plane before it crashed.
Meanwhile, AirAsia on Wednesday announced a compensation amount worth $100,000 would be granted to the next of kin of each passenger who was aboard the ill-fated flight QZ8501, the Wall Street Journal reported.
Earlier, talking to the reporters, AirAsia’s Acting Air Transportation Director-General Djoko Murdjatmodjo had said that the airline was “obliged to pay compensation”.
Indonesia’s National Search and Rescue Agency (BASARNAS) chief Bambang Soelistyo said on Wednesday that they had found the plane’s tail as the search entered 11th day.
“We have found the tail that has been our main target today,” search and rescue chief Bambang Soelistyo told reporters in the capital, Jakarta.
“I can ensure that this is part of the tail with the AirAsia mark on it.”
He added that despite strong water currents, murky waters, the divers managed to take photographs of the debris underwater.
The confirmation of tail section recovery came after the divers plunged into the Java Sea to retrieve the two large objects suspected detected by a US Navy ship, the USS Fort Worth, yesterday at a depth of 28 meters (92 feet) near the Karimata Strait off Indonesia. They were suspected of being the fuselage of the AirAsia plane, said a news agency.
Also, underwater devices were deployed to help divers locate the plane parts at the bottom of the sea where turbid water blocks visibility.
The finding came as the officials expanded the ‘Most Probable search area’ eastwards 40 nm and curtailed the ‘underwater search area’ to 300 sq nm, tweeted Indonesia Navy Chief Abdul Aziz Jaafar.
