Indonesian authorities have finally detected a ping that they believe to be from the AirAsia flight that crashed into the Java Sea on Dec. 28, according to news reports.
Reuters as well as the BBC quoted officials saying the ping appeared to be coming from the general area where the plane’s tail section was located on Jan. 7. They said the black-box recorder, which is located in the tail section, might have been separated from it.
Reuters quoted Santoso Sayogo, an investigator at Indonesia’s National Transportation Safety Committee, saying they “received an update from the field that the pinger locator already detected pings.”
“We have our fingers crossed it is the black box,” he said. “Divers need to confirm. Unfortunately it seems it’s off from the tail. But the divers need to confirm the position.”
The black box, which collects data from flights, is crucial to establishing a cause for the crash, which took 162 lives as the plane was flying from Surabaya in Indonesia to Singapore.
An Indonesian warship is using a crane to pull the tail out of the water where it was discovered off the coast of Borneo. According to the BBC, the effort was hampered by strong currents and low visibility. The tail section appeared to have broken in two.
Forty-six bodies have been recovered from the sea so far. Most of the dead are believed to be inside the plane’s fuselage, which has not been located.