Bodies, debris spotted in Java Sea
December 30, 2014
The head of Indonesia's National Search and Rescue Agency, Bambang Soelistyo, told reporters in Jakarta that investigators had determined that the debris found in the sea on Tuesday was from the AirAsia jet that vanished from air traffic controllers' radar screens early on Sunday.
"It's 100 per cent established that the debris found are from AirAsia," he said."We also evacuated three bodies, two females and one male."
Another official said around 40 bodies had been recovered.
Earlier, in the day, Soelistyo said rescuers had also found what may be the bulk of the wreckage.
"At 12:50 the air force Hercules found an object described as a shadow at the bottom of the sea in the form of a plane," Soelistyo said, adding that the search operation was now concentrated on the area where the "shadow" had been found, around 160 kilometers (100 miles) southwest of the town of Pangkalan Bun on Borneo Island.
"All elements in the areas and search and rescue personnel will be moved to the location," he said. "Their job is to find and evacuate all objects or passengers' bodies," he added.
CEO expresses grief
AirAsia chief executive Tony Fernandes used the mico-blogging website Twitter to express his sympathies to the relatives of the 162 passengers and crew who were on board Flight QZ8501.
Around 30 ships and 20 aircraft from Indonesia, Australia, Singapore, South Korea and Thailand were reported to be involved in the search of an area of up to 10,000 square nautical miles. Singapore said it was sending two underwater beacon detectors to try to locate the missing plane's cockpit voice and data recorders, while both the United States and China said they were sending ships to help in the search.
AirAsia gave the nationalities of those on board ad 155 Indonesians, three South Koreans and one each from Singapore, Malaysia and Britain, as well as the co-pilot, a French national.
AirAsia Indonesia is a unit of Malaysia-based AirAsia which dominates the regional market for low-cost air travel and at least until now had never suffered a fatal accident.
pfd/rg (Reuters, AP, AFP)