By Ainur Romah
JAKARTA
Search teams hunting the wreckage of AirAsia Flight QZ8501 were hoping Monday to send divers to examine several large objects detected underwater and presumed to be the bulk of the aircraft, local media said.
Three more bodies were retrieved from the Java Sea Monday, taking the total number to 37, and search leaders believe most of the remaining 125 bodies will be recovered from the aircraft’s fuselage as a number of corpses have already been found strapped to their seats.
Dozens of ships and aircraft are concentrating on an area about 90 nautical miles (166 kilometers) from the southwestern coast of Borneo Island, where five large objects have been detected 90 feet (30 meters) below the surface.
Bambang Soelistyo, head of the National Search and Rescue Agency, said the three corpses recovered Monday were found by Malaysian corvette KD Kasturi while the destroyer USS Sampson discovered a passenger seat in the Karimata Strait.
“This is still a priority area," Soelistyo said, the Kompas.com news website reported.
The AirAsia Airbus 320-200 was flying from Surabaya, Indonesia, to Singapore on 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.
Bad weather, zero visibility underwater and strong currents have frustrated attempts to reach underwater debris thought to be the body of the plane and are preventing divers and a remote-controlled submersible from operating effectively, Soelistyo added.
As well as the recovery of bodies, the search teams are prioritizing the hunt for the flight’s cockpit voice and flight data recorders, which should prove vital in learning what happened to the plane.
The recorders, known as black boxes, are located in the tail section and should be detectable for 30 days after a crash. However, Soelistyo said the telltale ‘pings’ from the recorders had not yet been detected.
Air force Colonel Johnson Simatupang, said the search area had been divided into four sectors with aircraft from Indonesia, the U.S., Russia and South Korea taking part.
The Indonesian military has offered to take the families of victims to the search site.
The Jakarta Post reported General Moeldoko as saying Monday: “I believe that their participation in the search mission will help reduce the feeling of loss and sadness. If they want to toss flowers to the sea, we can prepare that as well.”
Two aircraft have been set aside to bring relatives from Juanda airport in Subaraya to Pangkalan Bun, the town nearest the search area.
The Post said National Police chief General Sutarman had promised that all recovered bodies would be identified.
“Our DVI [Disaster Victim Identification] team is capable of identifying the bodies, no matter how damaged their condition,” he said. “But of course we will need more time if we do not recover the body as one piece."
Sutarman said the team, which consists of 260 forensic pathologists, including professionals from Singapore, Malaysia, South Korea and Australia, might take up to three weeks to identify some bodies.
Some remains are so badly decayed after days in the sea that they are unrecognizable. Psychiatrist Dr Hendro Arwana said viewing the bodies could have a bad psychological effect on relatives.
"I do not recommend they see the corpse directly, just look at a picture," he told Kompas.com.
The Indonesia Transportation Ministry has said AirAsia did not have permission to fly the Surabaya-Singapore route on the day of the crash but was licensed on four other days of the week.
The company's flights on this route have been suspended pending an investigation.
However, the Civil Aviation Authority of Singapore said on its website the operation of Flight QZ8501 was legal.
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
