Indonesian rescuers lifted the fuselage of the crashed AirAsia jetliner nearly to the water’s surface before it sank to the ocean floor again when the lifting balloons deflated on Saturday.
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 30-metre-long wreckage, said Suryadi Bambang Supriyadi, the operations chief at the National Search and Rescue Agency.
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 to Singapore.
Authorities believe many of the other bodies are still inside the fuselage.
“We now need additional balloons,” Mr. Supriyadi said after Saturday’s setback.
Some passengers’ belongings such as biscuits, milk boxes, hair rollers and even an iPhone with an attached earphone, as well as aircraft parts such as seat cushions and tables, floated out as the fuselage was being lifted, Detik.com reported.
Bad weather is a suspected factor in the crash. Just before the flight disappeared, the pilots asked to climb to a higher altitude to avoid threatening clouds, but were denied permission by air traffic controllers because of heavy air traffic.
