Search teams hunting for AirAsia Flight 8501 with 162 people on board find four large plane parts on sea bed but haven't been able to take images of the suspected wreck yet. Mana Rabiee reports.
Improving weather at the search site off Indonesia is allowing divers to resume efforts to locate objects believed to be pieces of the AirAsia flight that crashed into the ocean with 162 people aboard more than a week ago.
At least five ships with equipment that can detect the plane's black boxes have been deployed to the area where the suspected plane parts were spotted, Suryadi B. Supriyadi, Indonesia's National Search and Rescue director of operations, said early Monday in Indonesia.
"If it cannot be done by divers, we will use sophisticated equipment with capabilities of tracking underwater objects and then will lift them up," Supriyadi said.
"But today's searching mission is still, once again, depend on the weather," he said.
Divers tried to reach the site on Sunday, but rolling seas stirred up silt and mud, leaving divers unable to see well enough to search for the wreckage of AirAsia Flight 8501. The weather improved Monday, permitting divers to resume efforts.
Authorities have given up hope of finding survivors among the 162 passengers and crew of the flight, which plunged into the murky Java Sea less than an hour after departing Surabaya, Indonesia, on Dec. 28 bound for Singapore. So far 34 bodies have been recovered from the water.
The Rev. Philip Mantofa, whose congregation in Surabaya included more than a quarter of the victims, led a chapel service aimed at bringing some solace amid the tragedy.
"If God has called your child, allow me to say this: Your child is not to be pitied," Mantofa said, locking eyes with a grieving father seated in the front row. "Your child is already in God's arms. One day, your family will be reunited in heaven."
Media coverage of the crash has been all-consuming in the nation of 250 million people. Bowing to the request of family members, police will no longer allow media to cover the transfer of bodies identified by its Disaster Victim Identification team, East Java Police spokesman Awi Setiyono said.
"The families have objected. This is a private matter, let's respect this," Awi told The Jakarta Post.
Many of the passengers and crew are likely to be found still strapped to their seats inside the plane's wreckage, said rescue official Supriyadi, who like many Indonesians uses only one name.
The largest piece found so far with sonar — measuring 59 feet long and 18 feet wide — is believed to be part of the jet's body, Soelistyo said. Other debris in the area measured up to 39 feet long.
Divers tried to reach the site Sunday, but rolling seas stirred up silt and mud, leaving them with zero visibility, Henry Bambang Soelistyo, chief of Indonesia's National Search and Rescue Agency, said.
No definitive cause for the crash had been determined, but weather could have played a role. The jet's last communication indicated pilots were worried about bad weather. They sought permission to climb above threatening clouds but were denied because of heavy air traffic. Four minutes later, the airliner disappeared from radar without issuing a distress signal.
"Flight 8501 appears to have been trapped in bad weather that would have been difficult to avoid," according to a 14-page report released by Indonesia's Meteorology, Climatology and Geophysics Agency. The agency cited icing as a likely culprit, but the cause of the crash is still under investigation.
The jet's black boxes — which have yet to be located — should shed light on the plane's final moments and contain the pilots' dialogue, along with hundreds of streams of information about how the plane was behaving.
The crash triggered a massive international operation involving 20 planes and helicopters along with 27 ships from Indonesia, Japan, Malaysia, Singapore and the United States.
Contributing: William M. Welch, USA TODAY; The Associated Press
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