Elite Indonesian military divers battled powerful currents on Thursday to reach the submerged tail of crashed AirAsia Flight 8501, in hopes of finding its crucial black box data recorders. The plane crashed on December 28 during stormy weather as it flew from the Indonesian city of Surabaya to Singapore, claiming the lives of all 162 people on board.
Bad weather and huge waves have plagued multinational efforts to find the wreckage of the plane in the Java Sea, as well as all of the bodies and the black boxes that should contain the pilots' last words. The biggest breakthrough came on Wednesday with the discovery of the tail, which is where the black boxes are kept, buried into the seabed 30 metres (100 feet) underwater.
However powerful currents stymied efforts on Thursday by divers from the Indonesian Marines' elite diving unit to penetrate into the tail, search and rescue agency chief Bambang Soelistyo told reporters in Jakarta. "Today's search was really hampered by strong currents," Soelistyo told reporters in Jakarta after a day of repeated but fruitless probes to the tail. Divers travelled by rubber boat from the KRI Banda Aceh warship that was being stationed close to the site of tail wreckage.
Soelistyo said, if weather allowed, retrieval experts would try to lift the tail off the seabed on Friday, which would give divers access into the wreckage and search for the black boxes. He said the lifting could be done with special airbags or a crane, all of which would be brought to the Banda Aceh and another naval ship in the area on Friday.
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