By Ainur Rohmah
JAKARTA
Search teams looking for the wreckage of an AirAsia plane that crashed off the coast of Borneo last month with 162 people on board say they have located the tail section in the Java Sea.
Bambang Soelistyo, head of Indonesia's National Search and Rescue Agency, told local media Wednesday that "a geo survey ship has found other objects this morning."
He added that "the tail section has been discovered and confirmed."
AirAsia’s CEO Tony Fernandes soon 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."
"We need to find all parts soon so we can find all our guests to ease the pain of our families. That still is our priority."
On discovering the section, a remote-controlled submersible was immediately lowered into the waters alongside a team of divers to take pictures of the wreckage including the tail.
Soelistyo expressed confidence that the parts belonged to the fuselage of flight QZ8501 due to similarities with the flight, such as the inscription PK-AXC – thought to be the aircraft’s code.
"The weather is good there, so the divers were ordered to go diving. At 10.30 a.m., we received the report," Soelistyo was quoted as saying by Kompas.com.
Search efforts for bodies in Karimata Strait -- between the islands of Sumatra and Borneo -- continued into an 11th day Wednesday, with the remains of a child being retrieved, bringing the total number recovered to 40.
Since the flight went down Dec. 28, dozens of ships and aircraft have been concentrating on an area about 90 nautical miles (166 kilometers) from Borneo's southwestern coast.
The last voice contact with the aircraft was at 06.12 a.m. when the pilot requested permission to alter course and change altitude to avoid storm clouds.
Bad weather, zero visibility underwater and strong currents have frustrated attempts to reach debris thought to be the main body of the plane.
The majority of those on board were Indonesian, although the co-pilot was French and the passengers included three South Koreans, a Malaysian and a British national reportedly traveling with his Singaporean daughter.
Fernandes on Wednesday denied that AirAsia had no license to fly the route QZ8501 was on, the day after Indonesia’s transport minister told Kompas that he had "confessed the fault to me that [the route] has no license."
