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Where is the airplane?

Investigators still searching for the plane in the evidence
Commander of 1st Indonesian Air Force Operational Command Rear Marshall Dwi Putranto shows airplane parts and a suitcase found floating on the water near the site where AirAsia Flight 8501 disappeared. Bodies and debris seen floating in Indonesian waters Tuesday painfully ended the mystery of AirAsia Flight 8501, which crashed into the Java Sea and was lost to searchers for more than two days.

NEW YORK – The divers who try to recover more bodies and debris from the AirAsia jet that plunged into the sea won’t have to deal with extreme depths, but they will have to work carefully to preserve evidence from the Airbus A320 that dropped from the sky with 162 people on board.

Their work will be critical – both to the crash investigation and the grieving relatives who lost loved ones.

“To the families, there is nothing more important than getting your loved ones home,” said Matt Ziemkiewicz, whose sister, Jill, died in the 1996 crash of TWA 800 off Long Island. “So you’re going to want to recover people, but you’re also going to want to preserve evidence.” Ziemkiewicz now is president of the National Air Disaster Alliance.

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Q: Searchers found several bodies, a life jacket, a suitcase, an emergency door ... but where is the rest of the plane?

A: It could take days or longer to find the bulk of the wreckage. The bodies and items found Tuesday may have floated miles from the other wreckage. Experts will study currents to try to pinpoint possible locations and listen for transmitters attached to the flight-data and cockpit-voice recorders, the so-called black boxes that are designed to emit signals for at least 30 days.

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Q: What will the location of the wreckage tell us?

A: If the plane hit the water intact, most of the debris should rest in one spot, said James E. Hall, former chairman of the U.S. National Transportation Safety Board. But if the plane broke up in flight, the wreckage could be spread among several fields, miles apart.

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Q: What is the most important evidence in the wreckage?

A: The black boxes, which actually are orange. The flight-data and cockpit-voice recorders will reveal the plane’s speed, altitude, direction and the pilots’ actions during the flight. The cockpit recorder will capture the pilots’ final words, which helped investigators understand why Air France Flight 447 crashed into the Atlantic in 2009.

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Q: What other parts of the plane can hold important clues to the cause of the accident?

A: Engines, flaps, rudders and other controls all are important. Searchers will use sonar to map the debris field. Then, based on information gleaned from the black boxes, they will know which parts of the plane they’re most interested to recover, said Ray “Chip” McCord, a former Navy supervisor of salvage and now an instructor at Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

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Q: What can be learned from damage to the outside of the plane?

A: If the aluminum fuselage is torn, that’s a sign that the jet broke up in midair, said Peter Goelz, a former managing director of the NTSB. If it came down in one piece – perhaps after a stall, pilot error or mechanical problem – the metal in the fuselage and wings would show signs of enormous pressure, he said.

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Q: Can investigators get information from the bodies?

A: Yes. If a body is fully clothed, it probably emerged after the plane hit the water. Less clothing indicates that a person may have been ejected mid-flight, Goelz said. Autopsies that show death resulted from blunt-force trauma “could suggest passengers were alive upon impact with the water,” said Scott Hamilton, managing director of the aviation consulting firm Leeham Co. Other causes of death can point to rapid decompression of the plane after an in-flight breakup.



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