JAKARTA
Indonesia’s transport minister said Tuesday that AirAsia’s CEO, Tony Fernandes, has told him the airline did not have a license to fly from Surabaya city to Singapore the day Flight QZ8501 went missing with 162 people on board.
Ignatius Jonan told the Kompas.com news website from his office in Jakarta: "Tony Fernandes confessed the fault to me that [the route] has no license."
He added that Fernandes had accepted the ministry's decision to freeze the route while expressing hopes that AirAsia would be permitted to fly it after applying for a license once investigations have been finalized.
Search efforts for bodies from the aircraft in the Java Sea continued into their tenth day Tuesday as the remains of two more people were retrieved from, taking the total number recovered to 39.
Army commander General Moeldoko – who like many Indonesians uses only one name – said search teams were working to the best of their ability during a visit to a warship in the Karimata Strait, between the islands of Sumatra and Borneo.
"Keep on working, it will be increasingly difficult in the future. Continue the good work, facing all the obstacles, don't ever give up," Moeldoko told soldiers on Indonesia’s Banda Aceh.
With efforts to locate the bulk of the aircraft and its black box ongoing, search leaders believe most of the remaining 123 bodies will be recovered from the aircraft’s fuselage as a number of corpses have already been found strapped to their seats.
Indonesia’s navy has sent a “pinger locator” to detect signals from the flight data and cockpit voice recorders of the missing plane, alongside other equipment such as a multi-beam echo sounder and sonar to scan for objects on the ocean floor.
The AirAsia Airbus 320-200 was flying from Surabaya – Indonesia’s second city -- to Singapore Dec. 28 when it disappeared. The last voice contact was at 06.12 when the pilot requested permission to alter course and change altitude to avoid storm clouds.
Indonesia’s transport ministry had said AirAsia was licensed to fly the route four days a week – but not the day flight QZ8501 went missing. The Civil Aviation Authority of Singapore had also said on its website that the flight's operation was legal.
Amid the suspension of the company's flights on the route pending an investigation, questions have been raised about how unauthorized travel could have received clearance from air traffic controller every Sunday since the end of October 2014.
On Monday morning, authorities at Surabaya's Juanda Airport said AirAsia had permission to fly the route on Sundays – only to issue a revised statement less than 12 hours later.
"AirAsia did not propose changes to permits for flying from Saturday to Sunday to the Directorate General of Air Transport, so the flight was illegal," Kompas.com quoted airport authority chief Praminto Hadi as saying.
Indonesia’s corruption eradication commission has announced it will coordinate with the transport ministry in investigating the flight’s permit. The Commission’s vice chairman, Bambang Widjajanto, told Kompas.com they needed to know whether the flight had resulted from an administrative error or corruption.
Bad weather, zero visibility underwater and strong currents have frustrated attempts to reach debris thought to be the body of the plane, preventing divers and a remote-controlled submersible from operating effectively.
On Tuesday, commander Moeldoko also visited the United States’ USS Sampson warship to express gratitude to all the countries helping in search operations -- including Singapore, Malaysia, Japan, Russia, Australia and South Korea.
Meanwhile, Indonesia’s Financial Services Authority said the families of victims are entitled to compensation of up to Rp 1.25 billion (around $99,000) in insurance per passenger.
Firdaus Djaelani, an official from the government agency, told a press conference in Jakarta, “Claims can be paid by insurance. So passengers have a right to get a claim according to regulations."
The majority of those on the flight were Indonesians, although the co-pilot was French and the passengers included three South Koreans, a Malaysian and a British national reportedly travelling with his Singaporean daughter.
www.aa.com.tr/en
