Tail of aircraft found underwater, black box may be close by

Jakarta

THE TAIL of the crashed AirAsia jet has been found upturned on the seabed about 30km from the plane's last-known location, Indonesia's search and rescue agency said on Wednesday, indicating the crucial black box recorders may be nearby.

Flight QZ8501 vanished from radar screens over the northern Java Sea on Dec 28, less than half-way into a two-hour flight from Indonesia's second-biggest city of Surabaya to Singapore. There were no survivors among the 162 people on board. "We've found the tail that has been our main target," Fransiskus Soelistyo, head of the search and rescue agency, told a news conference in Jakarta.