Indonesian Officials Confirm AirAsia 8501 Tail Wing Found
Indonesia's search and rescue teams confirmed Wednesday that the jet tail of AirAsia flight 8501 has been found upturned on the floor of the Java Sea about 20 miles from where the plane crashed nearly two weeks ago.
Fransiskus Bambang Soelistyo, head of the country's search and rescue agency, confirmed that the tail wing had been found during a press conference in Jakarta on Wednesday. Authorities are hopeful that the tail wing will contain the plane's black box, a crucial piece of evidence that may provide information on how the plane crashed into the sea.
"We've found the tail that has been our main target," Soelistyo said at the press conference.
During the press conference, authorities also showed underwater photographs of the tail wing that matches the same AirAsia logo found on other AirAsia aircraft. The crucial plane part was found using sonar scan.
Several theories surrounding the downing of AirAsia 8501 on December 28 have continued to circulate as search and rescue teams recover parts of the plane and bodies of victims on board the 162-passenger commercial airliner that had been traveling from Indonesia to Singapore when it crashed into the sea.
Some have suggested that the pilots of the plane failed to read weather reports before takeoff, and subsequently flew directly into a vicious storm in the Java Sea that could have possibly been avoided.
Others are suggesting that the plane's crash was caused by an icing of the engines in extreme temperatures that caused the plane's equipment to stop working midair.
