By Ainur Rohmah
JAKARTA
Search teams once again faced challenging winds and rains Thursday in efforts to recover bodies from the wreckage of an AirAsia flight that crashed into the Java Sea with 162 people on board.
Calm weather conditions had permitted divers and helicopters to join search operations on the morning of the search’s fifth day, but they were forced to turn back later due to heavy downpour and strong winds during Indonesia’s rainy season.
Adil Triyanto, the captain of the Purworejo warship deployed in the search, said wind speeds had reached 30 knots.
"Visibility is currently at only 50-60 meters," he said, according to the Tempo.co news website.
Adil said the rough conditions forced him to call off the 69 elite divers who needed at least six hours of better weather to scour the area where the wreckage of flight QZ8501 was discovered.
Ten bodies have been recovered around the crash site. As the search area expands due to strong currents, objects from the AirAsia plane, such as a safety raft and personal items including suitcases and spectacles, have also been retrieved.
Debris from the aircraft, including an emergency door, were initially found by a Hercules C-130 search plane at 11.00 local time (04.00 GMT) Tuesday in Karimata Strait between the Indonesian islands of Sumatra and Borneo.
The discovery - 100 miles (160 kilometers) southwest of Pangkalan Bun town in Central Kalimantan province - came on the third day of the search as officials widened the operation to cover 97,000 square miles (156,000 square km).
Three corpses were retrieved on Thursday.
The seventh body to be recovered, belonging to a female, was taken to Pangkalan Bun’s Imanuddin Hospital.
"When she was found, her garments had slipped off," Arthur Tampi, head of the medical and health center, was quoted as saying by Kompas.com. “We are still evaluating, and then we will send [the body] to Surabaya [city] for further identification."
Of the six bodies discovered earlier, three were male and three female.
A disaster victim identification team in Surabaya -- Indonesia’s second city and the flight’s departure point - has begun collecting data on the victims from the flight and their family members to identify the bodies.
Anton Castilani, executive director of the victim identification effort, said the bodies were intact and in good condition, and had not suffered any burns.
According to the National Search and Rescue Agency, a total of 670 personnel, 27 ships and 57 aircraft were deployed to the area, some provided by other countries including Singapore, Malaysia and Australia.
Tatang Zaenudin, the agency’s deputy of operations, said a sophisticated Baruna Jaya Ship was focused on finding the missing plane’s black box.
"The ship is equipped with detectors to detect the signals of black boxes," he said at a press conference broadcast on local television. He added that the vessel’s "sonar scan multi-print" system had the capacity to produce three-dimensional images of underwater objects.
Indonesian President Joko Widodo met with the victims’ grieving families at Surabaya’s Juanda international airport Tuesday night to pass on his personal condolences.
Meanwhile, AirAsia Chief Executive Tony Fernandes refused to speculate about what had happened during the flight.
"At the moment, let the focus be the search for victims. Do not speak yet about the cause of the accident," he told reporters.
The last contact with the flight was at 06.12 a.m. Sunday when the pilot requested permission to veer left and climb to 38,000 feet (11,600 meters) to avoid heavy storm clouds.
The pilot was granted permission to change course but not to climb immediately due to another flight on the same path. No distress signal was received before the plane disappeared from radar.
The majority of those aboard were Indonesians although the co-pilot was French and the passengers included three South Koreans, a Malaysian and a British national reportedly travelling with his Singaporean daughter.
The loss of AirAsia is the third major air disaster to hit Southeast Asia this year. In March, Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370 went missing en route to Beijing with 239 aboard and four months later Flight MH17 crashed in Ukraine’s Donetsk region near the border with Russia, killing all 298 aboard.
AirAsia had a positive safety record and had not reported any previous disasters.
www.aa.com.tr/en
