Indonesia to raise tail of AirAsia plane as search for black boxes continues

Head of Indonesia's National Search and Rescue Agency (BASARNAS) Bambang Soelistyo said on Friday the search operation for a crashed AirAsia jetliner would be focused on lifting up the plane's tail.

"We have to wait for the lifting up of the tail part, so as to see whether the black box remain in its place or not, while at the same time search on the pings continues, conducted by Jadayat ship and KNKT team," he told a press conference at the BASARNAS headquarters.

Indonesia has a plan to raise the tail of the Airbus A320-200 either with floating balloons or with a crane set in a navy vessel off the Central Kalimantan coast. The tail section was partially buried in the seabed 30 meters underwater.

Meanwhile, navigation ship Jadayat and members of the National Transportation Safety Committee (KNKT) would continue detecting pings that possibly emitted from the plane's block boxes.

Indonesia Military Commander General Moeldoko said on Friday that the pings, believed to be from the ill-fated AirAsia plane, were detected some 300 meters from the location of the tail found on Wednesday.

So far, 48 bodies of victims have been recovered after two more corpses were found by an Indonesian ship on Friday. Divers were sent to retrieve the bodies that were strapped in their seats.

"Some 41 bodies recovered in the operation have been moved to Surabaya, five were still kept in Pangkalan Bun hospital and two in a geosurvey ship at the moment," Soelistyo said.

Flight QZ8501 crashed in the Java Sea near the Karimata Strait on Dec. 28 en route from Surabaya to Singapore with 162 people aboard. Endi