A multinational team searching for a crashed AirAsia passenger jet found another large underwater object believed to be part of the plane, but persistent bad weather hampered efforts on Sunday to locate its black box recorders and recover bodies of victims.
Indonesian officials say five pieces of wreckage have now been pinpointed on the sea floor off Borneo, where the Airbus A320-200 crashed a week ago with 162 people on board.
Divers were sent to investigate the debris early on Sunday, but diving had since been suspended due to bad weather, the head of Indonesia’s search and rescue agency, Fransiskus Bambang Soelistyo, said.
Earlier Rukman Soleh, weather bureau chief in Pangkalan Bun, the southern Borneo town where the search operation is based, had said there could be a break later on Sunday in the wind and heavy seas that have dogged recovery efforts all week.
“Weather should provide the search effort with a window of opportunity today, with lower waves expected for the next two days,” he said.
So far, only 30 bodies have been recovered from last week’s crash, and officials believe many of the remaining 132 passengers and crew are strapped to their seats inside the plane, National Search and Rescue deputy chief Tatang Zainudin told reporters.
“We are racing with time and weather in running this mission,” he said as early morning clear skies slowly became overcast.
The plane went down in the Java Sea on Dec. 28, halfway into a two-hour flight to Singapore from Surabaya, Indonesia’s second-largest city.
Minutes before losing contact, the pilot told air traffic control that he was approaching threatening clouds, but was denied permission to climb to a higher altitude because of heavy air traffic.
What caused the disaster remains unclear, but Indonesia’s Meteorology, Climatology and Geophysics Agency released a report, saying “Flight 8501 appears to have been trapped in bad weather that would have been difficult to avoid.”
Black boxes sought
While the plane’s black boxes — the flight data and cockpit voice recorders — have yet to be located, the discovery of the wreckage would greatly benefit the investigation.
The biggest object, measuring 18 metres long and 5.4 metres wide, appeared to be part of the jet’s body, said Henry Bambang Soelistyo, chief of the National Search and Rescue Agency.
Other chunks of debris measured up to 12 metres in length. Suspected plane parts also were seen scattered on beaches during an aerial survey.
About 90 divers from Indonesia and Russia were being deployed, Zainudin said.
“We hope lower waves will give us a better result today,” Zainudin said. “We are racing with time and weather in running this mission.”
Generally, aviation experts say the more passengers, luggage and parts of the aircraft that remain intact, the more likely the plane hit the water in one piece. That would signal problems like a mechanical error or a stall instead of a midair breakup due to an explosion or sudden depressurization.
Indonesian military personnel stand guard as a military aircraft carrying caskets containing the remains of passengers on board AirAsia flight QZ8501 arrive in Surabaya. Ships searching for the wreck have found four large objects. (Athit Perawongmetha/Reuters)
Indonesian authorities announced the grounding of AirAsia flights to Singapore from Surabaya, with the Transport Ministry saying the airline did not have a permit to fly on Sundays. However, Singapore’s Civil Aviation Authority said Saturday that from its end, the airline had been approved to fly the route daily.
AirAsia, which began operations in 2001 and quickly became one of the region’s most popular low-cost carriers, said it was reviewing the suspension. The crash was the airline’s first.
Source:: http://www.cbc.ca/news/world/airasia-flight-qz8501-divers-stymied-by-bad-weather-1.2889153?cmp=rss
