Russian team optimistic about finding black boxes of crashed Air Asia plane

PANGKALAN BUN, Indonesia (Xinhua) - A senior Russian official said here on Saturday that the equipment and personnel it deployed in search for the wreckage and black boxes of a crashed AirAsia jetliner would be "very much" capable in carrying out its mission.

"The plane can detect even the small icons of wreckage in water and the bottom of the sea. We are quite optimistic regarding the goal of our mission," Russian Deputy Chief of Mission Alexander Shilin told a press conference after the landing of a Beriev Be- 200 plane at an air base in Pangkalan Bun, Central Kalimantan province.

He added the divers and experts taking part in the search operation had excellent and vast experiences in search missions.

The Russia mission included 22 dives and 17 search experts, Shilin said, adding the Be-200 amphibious plane also brought a remotely-operated submersible vehicle that could operate in a maximum depth of 300 meters.

"The submersible is equipped with special sonar and acoustic system that can detect beacon of the black boxes," he said. "Finding the black boxes is our main goal here. We can provide the help as much as we can."

Russia joined an Indonesia-led search operation by sending two planes, Be-200 amphibious and Ilyushin Il-76, on Thursday.

On the 7th day after Flight QZ8501 crashed in the Java Sea on Sunday, the search operation is now focused on locating the black boxes of the Airbus A320-200.

The Indonesian team had detected a large shadow of the possible wreckage of the plane on Friday near the Bay of Kumai off Central Kalimantan.

The debris and victim bodies from the ill-fated plane were spotted by an Indonesian plane on Tuesday.

Flight QZ8501 with 162 people onboard went down in the Indonesian waters amid bad weather soon after it took off from Surabaya in Indonesia's East Java en route to Singapore Sunday morning.

So far, 30 bodies from the crashed plane have been retrieved and flown to Surabaya for identification.