By Ainur Rohmah
JAKARTA
Teams searching for the remains of AirAsia Flight QZ8501 were hoping for a break in the weather Sunday to allow them to recover more bodies and the vital ‘black box’ recorders that will help investigators piece together what happened to the aircraft.
As the search entered its second week, sonar detected a fifth large piece of what is believed to be the missing Airbus 320-200 on the bottom of the Java Sea, 100 feet (30 meters) below the waves.
Divers attempted to reach the objects, the largest of which measures around 59 ft by 18 ft, early Sunday but diving was later suspended due to bad weather, the head of Indonesia's National Search and Rescue Agency Bambang Soelistyo said.
“We have temporarily halted the sea-diving operation until the weather improves,” he said, according to the Jakarta Post. Nine vessels and 95 divers, mostly Indonesian and Russian, are on stand-by in the vicinity.
The search has been hampered by stormy weather and high waves throughout the week. On Sunday visibility was reduced to 30 ft with waves of 9 ft and earlier poor underwater conditions had prevented a remote-controlled submersible from sending images of the objects.
Four other bodies were retrieved Sunday, close to the site of the presumed wreckage in the Karimata Straits off the coast of Borneo, taking the number of recovered corpses to 34 out of the 162 passengers and crew aboard the Subaraya to Singapore flight.
Soelistyo said one body was recovered by Singaporean naval vessel RSS Persistence while the U.S. Navy’s USS Sampson brought the other three back to Pangkalan Bun, the nearest town to the site.
In total, six bodies have been identified and returned to their families while the rest are still being identified.
Brigadier Arthur Tampir, head of the Police Medical and Health Center at Bhayangkara Hospital, told the Kompas.com news website that 160 forensic experts were working to identify the victims.
An Indonesian official said Sunday that a “pinger locator” had been sent to detect signals from the flight data and cockpit voice recorders of the missing plane, according to the Antara news agency.
Ridwan Djamaluddin, deputy head of the Agency for the Assessment and Application of Technology, said: “It will send signals to the AirAsia black box, which will reply to the calling signals. We hope to learn the precise location of the black box.”
It is believed many of the victims will be recovered when divers are able to explore the plane’s fuselage. Some corpses have already been recovered still strapped to their seats.
The last voice contact with the flight was at 06.12 on Dec. 28 when the pilot requested permission to veer left and climb to 38,000 ft to avoid heavy storm clouds.
The pilot was granted permission to change course but not to climb immediately. It has been reported that the plane may have stalled during a climb.
The majority of those aboard 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
