Three Indonesian ships detected the signals, said Indroyono Soesilo, coordinating minister for Maritime Affairs. They were located around 2 miles from where the aircraft’s tail secton was discovered.
“The two are close to each other, just about 20 meters,” Soesilo told reporters. “Hopefully, they are the cockpit voice recorder and flight data recorder.”
Officials said earlier Sunday that two separate pings had been detected.
Tonny Budiono, team coordinator at the Directorate of Sea Transportation, said in a statement that the signals were intense in one area, and that the recorders were believed to be lodged there beneath wreckage. If divers are unable to free it, all of the debris will be lifted, Budiono said.
Other officials cautioned it was too soon to know whether the sounds were coming from the black boxes, which detached from the tail when the plane plummeted into the sea Dec. 28, killing all 162 people on board. The recorders are key to understanding what caused the aircraft to go down.
“Until now, I have not yet received reports that the black boxes have been discovered,” said Henry Bambang Soelistyo, chief of Indonesia’s search and rescue agency.
The Commission for Transportation Safety stopped a remote-operated vehicle from being deployed to probe the area where the pings were heard, fearing it could potentially damage the boxes, said Muhammad Ilyas, head of oceanic surveys at Indonesia’s technology agency. Instead, the sites were to be examined by divers.
Sonar on Sunday detected a large object in the same vicinity as the pings. Officials initially were hopeful it was the main section of the Airbus A320’s cabin, but Soelistyo said divers confirmed it was instead a wing and debris from the engine.
Search efforts have been consistently hampered by high waves and powerful currents. Silt and sand, along with murky river runoff, have resulted in blinding conditions for divers.
While the cause of the crash is not yet known, bad weather is believed to have been a factor.
The tail’s excavation was a major success in the slow-moving hunt for victims and wreckage from Flight 8501. The red metal chunk from the tail, with the words “AirAsia” clearly visible across it, was brought to the surface from a depth of about 100 feet on Saturday. The vertical stabilizer was still largely intact, but the attached fuselage was ripped open.
The find, however, was tinged with disappointment when the black boxes were not found. Their beacons emit signals for about 30 days until the batteries die, meaning divers have about two weeks left before they go silent.
Several other large objects have been spotted in the search area by sonar, but they have not yet been confirmed to be parts of the plane.
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