Four more bodies have been discovered as rescuers fought against strong currents to lift the fuselage of the crashed Air Asia jetliner almost to the sea's surface before it sank again.
The 30-metre long wreckage was brought to the surface before the lifting balloons deflated and it sunk back down again this morning.
Four bodies were discovered though around the area where dozens of divers were struggling with strong current and poor visibility to prepare to retrieve the plane, operations chief at the National Search and Rescue Agency Suryadi Bambang Supriyadi said.
Divers reached the fuselage section for the first time on Friday and retrieved six bodies.
A total of 69 bodies have now been recovered from AirAsia Flight 8501, which crashed on December 28 with 162 people on board while flying from Surabaya, Indonesia's second largest city, to Singapore.
Authorities believe many of the other bodies are still inside the fuselage.
"We now need additional balloons," Supriyadi said after yesterday's setback.
He added that the cockpit was reported to be about 500 metres from the fuselage at a depth of 30 metres and the bodies of the pilot and co-pilot might be inside. "Divers would evacuate (them) if they are there," he said.
Investigators are analysing data from the aircraft's cockpit voice and flight data recorders with advisers from Airbus, the plane's manufacturer.
Tatang Kurniadi, head of the National Transportation Safety Committee, has ruled out sabotage and said a preliminary report on the accident is expected to be submitted to the International Civil Aviation Organisation next week.
A full analysis of what went wrong could take up to a year, Kurniadi said.
No comments:
Post a Comment