Article from: Agence France-Presse
A US Navy ocean survey ship has located the "black box" flight recorders from an Indonesian airliner which crashed on New Year's Day.
The USNS Mary Sears detected ultrasonic pinger signals from the ocean floor on the same frequency as the black boxes from the missing plane, the US embassy said.
"In subsequent sweeping of the ocean floor around the pinger location, the Mary Sears detected heavy debris scattered over a wide area and is currently analysing that debris to verify if it is from the missing aircraft," it said.
The Adam Air Boeing 737-400 was carrying 102 passengers and crew when it disappeared halfway through its flight from Surabaya on the central island of Java to Manado on Sulawesi on January 1.
Indonesia has mounted a massive air, land and sea search for the plane which has been concentrated off the western coast of Sulawesi.
The Mary Sears and Indonesian navy ships had earlier detected large objects at a depth of over 1000 metres.
A part of the tailfin, found by a fisherman, is the largest piece of debris from the airliner recovered so far.
Dozens of small fragments of the plane and pieces of seats or folding tray tables have been washed up on the beaches and plucked from the sea, but no bodies have been found.
Preliminary assumptions were that the plane did not explode in mid-air, but may have broken into pieces as it crashed into the sea, a member of the National Committee for Transport Safety has said.
The search for the airliner was marred by an embarrassing mix-up when officials wrongly reported wreckage and survivors had been found on a mountainside a day after it went missing.
A flight data recorder.
The United States military may have found the Black Boxes from a missing Indonesian jetliner that went missing on January 1, 2007.

Using ultrasonic pinger signals, the USNS Mary Sears located debris on the bottom of the ocean that match the signal that they are using to find the boxes. 

"We have detected heavy debris scattered over a wide area," said the U.S. embassy in Indonesia in a statement. Other debris may also have been located at least 1,000 meters below the oceans surface.

"During the search of the projected crash site of Adam Air Flight 574, the Mary Sears, using a Towed Pinger Locator, detected pingers on the same frequency of the black box associated with the missing airplane," added the statement.

Despite the announcement, Indonesia's transport safety board denies receiving any reports that the boxes have been found.

"One thing is for sure, up until this second, I have not received any report from the (Indonesian) liaison officers who were onboard the ship," said Indonesian air force commander who is in charge of the ongoing search to find the plane, Eddy Suyanto.

The largest piece of the plane to be recovered so far, is the tail of the plane, which was discovered by a fisherman. Trays and seats have also been recovered, but so far none of the bodies of the passengers or crew have been found.

The plane, a Adam Air Boeing 737-400 went missing, in flight from Surabaya, on the island of Java, to Manado on the island Sulawesi. All 102 people on board the plane are believed to have been killed.

Just 1 day after the plane crashed, false reports that the wreckage was found on land and 12 survivors were found had began to circulate. The 12 people that were reported to have been survivors, turned out to be the remaining survivors of a ferry crash in the same area 4 days before the plane was reported missing.

The cause of the crash is still not known, and investigations are ongoing.