Divers examine AirAsia jet fuselage, search for bodies

Indonesian navy divers plunged into the sea at dawn Thursday to examine a large chunk of the AirAsia jet’s fuselage, aiming to bring bodies believed to be trapped inside to the surface, the director of the country’s search and rescue agency said. At least 15 divers descended to the seabed at a depth of 28 meters to examine wreckage, calculate its weight and search for bodies inside, said Suryadi Bambang Supriyadi, the operation director at the National Search and Rescue Agency. When corpses are found, the divers will try to put them in individual body bags, which rescuers on ships will then hoist to the surface, he said. The day before, a Singaporean navy ship spotted the 30m-long section of the plane body with a wing attached on the bottom of the Java Sea. Rescuers believe that most of the bodies of the 162 people on board are inside.

If it is not too heavy, we may lift the whole piece and evacuate the victims. If it’s too heavy, we may then swim into the fuselage and pull out the bodies one by one before lifting it.

Suryadi Bambang Supriyadi, official co-ordinating the search

So far, only 50 bodies have been recovered from the plane that crashed on Dec 28, less than halfway into a two-hour flight from Surabaya, Indonesia, to Singapore. Most of the victims are Indonesian. The plane’s “black boxes” - the flight data recorder and cockpit flight recorder - were retrieved on Monday and Tuesday. They will be key to learning what caused the plane to crash. Bad weather is a suspected factor. Nine aircraft and 12 ships were involved in the search operation Thursday, including two U.S. ships and one each from Singapore and China.

Asia-Pacific QZ8501