PANGKALAN BUN, INDONESIA // Indonesian divers on Thursday descended to the main body of an AirAsia jet that crashed last month, hoping to recover the bulk of the disaster’s victims one day after it was located by a navy ship.
Flight QZ8501 went down on December 28 in stormy weather during what was supposed to be a short trip from the Indonesian city of Surabaya to Singapore, killing all 162 people on board.
After a lengthy search often hampered by bad weather, a Singapore military vessel spotted the fuselage – the plane’s main body – at the bottom of the Java Sea on Wednesday.
It is hoped that the main section will contain most of the missing passengers and crew. So far just 50 bodies have been recovered.
Underwater photos taken by high-tech search equipment showed the fuselage and part of Malaysia-based AirAsia’s motto “Now Everyone Can Fly” painted on the plane’s exterior.
Bad weather and high waves prevented divers headed for the main section in the morning from assessing the condition of the wreckage.
Officials will try to lift the fuselage if divers have problems retrieving bodies from the wreckage while it is still on the seabed, said national search and rescue chief Bambang Soelistyo.
The fuselage is attached to part of a wing, and the wreckage is 26 metres long.
Rescuers have already used giant balloons to lift the plane’s tail out of the water, after it was found about two kilometres from the main body.
Farmer Aris Siswanto, whose wife’s body has yet to be recovered, expressed relief that the fuselage had been found.
“I have waited anxiously for 19 days now without any certainty,” said Mr Siswanto, who lives close to Surabaya. “With the discovery of the fuselage, I feel like I have new hope, even if it is only the hope of seeing my wife’s remains.”
Officials said the search was now being scaled back, with most international vessels leaving.
The discovery of the fuselage was the latest boost to the search effort following the retrieval this week of the jet’s black boxes – the flight data recorder and cockpit voice recorder – which contain crucial information that should help determine why the plane went down.
The boxes, which are actually orange in colour, have been flown to Jakarta, where Indonesia’s National Transportation Safety Committee is leading an investigation into the accident, helped by experts from countries including France and the US.
* Agence France-Presse