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| Air Asia Crash: Another body, fifth large object found | | | Agencies
JAKARTA / SINGAPORE,Jan 4: Rescuers today recovered another body and a fifth large object from the crashed AirAsia jet in the Java Sea, even as persistent bad weather hampered divers' efforts to reach the fuselage believed to contain remaining victims besides the black box.
The multinational efforts to scour the choppy waters entered its second week today after AirAsia Flight QZ8501 en route from Indonesia's Surabaya city to Singapore carrying 162 people on board mysteriously crashed last Sunday.
A pinger locator was deployed today to find the black box of the plane to determine the cause of the fatal crash.
The development comes a day after four large metal objects were located on the seabed amid reports that the plane was flying on an unauthorised schedule when it crashed.
The body was spotted by personnel on RSS Persistence at 7.58am during a brief respite from bad weather and recovered on board the ship at 8.46am, Singapore's Ministry of Defence (MINDEF) said in a statement. This takes the total number of bodies retrieved from the Java Sea so far to 31. The body was found within the Republic of Singapore Navy's designated search area in the Java Sea, it said.
Meanwhile, Indonesia's national search and rescue agency BASARNAS said a fifth large object was discovered underwater this morning. It measured about 9.8 x 1.1 x 0.4 metres.
At a news conference today, BASARNAS officials also said dives have been temporarily suspended due to bad weather, and a remotely operated underwater vehicle has been sent to the search site. There are 17 Russian divers with unmanned submersibles at the search area too.
Officials believe many of the remaining 131 passengers and crew are still strapped to their seats and efforts have focussed on locating the fuselage of the ill-fated plane.
Divers waited for breaks in today's weather to reach the spot but nearly zero visibility have hampered their efforts, said Henry Bambang Soelistyo, chief of the National Search and Rescue Agency.
There were 20 aircraft and 27 ships deployed today combing the waters for the victims and wreckage of the Airbus 320-200 aircraft, BASARNAS officials said.
Two objects were found at the bottom of the sea near Pangkalan Bun yesterday. One of the them was measured at 9.4 metres by 4.8 metres and a half-metre high. The other, found nearby, was 7.2 metres by a half metre.
According to a report on the website of Indonesia's meteorological agency BMKG, weather was the "triggering factor" in the crash.
"The most probable weather phenomenon was icing which can cause engine damage due to a cooling process. This is just one of the possibilities that occurred based on the analysis of existing meteorological data," it said. Investigators are focusing on autopsies of recovered bodies to ascertain what happened to the plane. Though some of the victims' families did not approve of autopsies, media reports said.
The Indonesian authorities said AirAsia had violated the terms of its licence for the Surabaya to Singapore route by flying on a Sunday, the day the aircraft plunged into the Java Sea. The authorities would probe the carrier's other schedules, The Straits Times reported.
The AirAsia plane was not permitted to fly the Surabaya- Singapore route on Sundays.
Singapore said it had approved the Surabaya-Singapore route for AirAsia flights on Sundays after the low-cost carrier's permit was frozen by Indonesia. Over a thousand worshippers attended solemn Sunday services at an Indonesian church and prayed for relatives of the deceased.
The affected families have been preparing funerals as the bodies recovered are identified in Surabaya, where a crisis centre has been set up. |
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