Divers Will Try To Retrieve AirAsia Black Boxes

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14 January, 2015

After being hampered by a spell of bad weather, searchers on Thursday returned with "full force" to retrieve bodies and the AirAsia plane wreckage in the Java Sea off Indonesia as the reasons for the crash remained unclear.

"The visibility is good this morning, we are ready to fight with full force to search for bodies, wreckages that can reveal what went wrong with this accident," Indonesia's First Marshal Agus Dwi Putranto said.

Four aircraft were dispatched to the area just after sunrise, reports said.

Indonesia had a team of 47 Navy divers ready to go down to a large, dark object detected by sonar on the ocean floor. If the object, lying 30-50 meters deep, is the AirAsia plane, divers would look to retrieve its black boxes. An official said no usual black box "pings" had been detected.

The massive hunt for the 162 people on board the Singapore-bound AirAsia Flight QZ8501 that went missing on Sunday after taking off from Surabaya, Indonesia, was severely limited due to heavy rain, wind and thick clouds on Wednesday.

Another body was retrieved some 70km from the shores of Pengkalan Bun on Thursday morning, taking the total number of bodies retrieved so far to eight.

Fair weather spurred search teams to take-off from Pangkalan Bun's Iskandar Airport on their recovery mission on the fifth day.

As of now, out of the eight bodies retrieved -- two have been sent to Surabaya, three are still on the ships, two undergoing post-mortem at Sultan Imanuddin Hospital here, and the one which was pulled out today is being flown on a Super Puma helicopter to the airport.

Sunarbowo Sandi, search and rescue coordinator in Pangkalan Bun, said he is hopeful divers would be able to explore the wreckage site.

Bodies In Fuselage

"It's possible the bodies are in the fuselage. So it's a race now against time and weather," Sandi said.

A vigil was held in Surabaya for the victims of the crash. Hundreds of residents and relatives of those on board lit candles and observed a minute's silence for the victims.

"Let us pray for the grieving families of those on board the plane. Let us pray this will be the last tragedy for Surabaya," Surabaya's Mayor Tri Rismaharini said.

All New Year's Eve celebrations in East Java province were cancelled. In Jakarta, the capital, residents began new year festivities with a prayer for the victims.

Nearly three days after the Singapore-bound plane went off the radar, its debris was found on Tuesday in the Karimata Strait near Pangkalanbun, Central Kalimantan.

The plane was flying at 32,000 feet (9,753 meters) and had asked to fly at 38,000 feet, but when the air traffic control gave permission for a rise to 34,000 feet a few minutes later, there was no response.

A source close to the probe into what happened said radar data appeared to show that the aircraft made an "unbelievably" steep climb before it crashed, possibly pushing it beyond the Airbus A320's limits, Reuters reported.

The plane was carrying 155 passengers - one British, one Malaysian, one Singaporean, three South Koreans, 149 Indonesians - and seven crew members - six Indonesians and a French co-pilot.

(Agencies)