Indonesia search and rescue teams hunting for the wreck of an AirAsia passenger jet have located a fifth large object on the seabed, agency chief Fransiskus Bambang Soelistyo told reporters on Sunday.
The Indonesia AirAsia Airbus AIR.PA A320-200 >plunged into the Java Sea one week ago while en route from Indonesia's second-biggest city Surabaya to Singapore with 162 people on board. No survivors have been found.
Bad weather was again >hindering the search teams with diving suspended, said Mr. Soelistyo, adding that 31 bodies of the mostly Indonesian passengers and crew now having been recovered.
>Read: what AirAsia has had to say
Search enters 8th day
The search for victims and black box recorders of ill-fated AirAsia jet on Sunday resumed, a day after the rescue teams found four large objects in the choppy waters of the Java Sea on the seventh day.
With the weather improving, the multi-national searchers are hopeful of retrieving the rest of the bodies and debris of the Airbus 320.
Four large metal objects belonging to the doomed AirAsia jet >were found on Saturday .
“We’ve found four big parts from the plane we’re looking for,” Bambang Soelistyo, chief of Indonesia’s search and rescue agency Basarnas, told reporters in Jakarta on Saturday.
Two objects were found at the bottom of the sea near Pangkalan Bun. One of them was measured at 9.4 metres by 4.8 metres and a half-metre high. The other, found nearby, was 7.2 metres by a half metre.
Investigators are focusing on autopsies of recovered bodies to ascertain what happened to the plane. Though some of the victims’ families did not approve of autopsies, media reports said.
More ships were deployed on Friday with high-end equipment to locate the fuselage of doomed AirAsia jet even as the weather, which has hindered the search the last several days, remained a worry.
The “most probable area” for search of the missing AirAsia flight has been demarcated, Royal Malaysian Navy Chief Abdul Aziz Jaafar said on Friday.
The Munich-based reinsurance giant said on Monday that its subsidiary Allianz Global Corporate & Specialty U.K. is the lead insurer for AirAsia, including for liability insurance.
Sunu Widyatmoko, Chief Executive Officer of AirAsia Indonesia said: “We are sorry to be here today under these tragic circumstances. We would like to extend our sincere sympathies to the family and friends of those on board QZ8501. Our sympathies also go out to the families of our dear colleagues." >Read more…
The disappearance of an AirAsia passenger jet soon after takeoff inevitably brings back memories of the mystery behind Malaysia Airlines Flight 370, which disappeared nearly 10 months ago and is yet to be found. >Read more…
