Black Box for flight QZ8501 located

Recovery teams have found the tail of the crashed Indonesia AirAsia Flight 8501 in the Java Sea and in reports just in from Sky News, pings from the black box are reported to have been detected.  

The location of the pings is reported to be where the tail was located.

On January6th, Ihe Indonesian search and rescue agency chief Bambang Soelistyo told reporters that “we have successfully obtained part of the plane that has been our target - the tail portion has been confirmed found.”

A photograph taken by divers clearly show part of the plane’s registration PK-AXC, which is painted on the rear of the fuselage where the black boxes are located.

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Flight 8501 vanished on December 28 on a flight from Surabaya to Singapore with 162 passengers and crew aboard.

The crew asked air traffic control for permission to climb and deviate left of the flight path to avoid thunderstorm but before permission was granted contact was lost with the aircraft.


The  Actual aircraft involved in the crash - note the registration near the tail


So far only small aircraft parts and 40 bodies have been recovered with bad weather playing havoc with search efforts.

At the same the Indonesian Transport Ministry has started a major crackdown on officials that have overseen Indonesia Air Asia’s flight operations.

The Ministry claims that Indonesia AirAsia did not have permission to fly the route on Sundays, although Singapore authorities says the airline did.

One official has been sacked and several others have been disciplined.

AirAsia Indonesia has declined to comment on the allegations.