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Indonesian authorities say searchers have lifted to the surface of the Java Sea the tail of an AirAsia plane that crashed on December 28, killing all 162 people on board, the Voice of America reported.

Recovery teams attached balloons to the wreckage Saturday to float the tail section to the surface. Investigators hope the cockpit voice and data recorders are still inside the tail. Their recovery is essential to finding out the cause of the crash.

Searchers detected ping signals from the black boxes of Flight 8501 on Friday, but officials said the boxes seemed to be separated from the tail section.

The tail was located Wednesday on the sea bed about 30 kilometers from the plane's last known location at a depth of around 30 meters.

The Airbus 320 vanished from radar screens over the northern Java Sea less than halfway into a two-hour flight from Indonesia's second-biggest city of Surabaya to Singapore.

There were no survivors of the crash. Only 48 bodies have been recovered so far.