About 100 family members of AirAsia Flight QZ8501 crash victims sought strength yesterday, a week after the disaster, while weather again prevented searchers from reaching a large object on the ocean floor that is believed to be the fuselage.
Emotionally exhausted relatives sang and cried at a tiny chapel in Surabaya, Indonesia, the city the plane departed on Sunday last week with 162 crew members and passengers.
Philip Mantofa, who heads the congregation at the city’s Mawar Sharon Church, where more than a quarter of the crash victims were members, urged those gathered to find comfort in their faith while embracing the reality that no one survived the disaster.
Photo: EPA
“If God has called your child, allow me to say this: Your child is not to be pitied,” Mantofa told one Indonesian man seated in the front row. “Your child is already in God’s arms. One day, your family will be reunited in heaven.”
It is not clear what caused the Singapore-bound plane to crash into the Java Sea 42 minutes after taking off on what was supposed to be a two-hour flight. Minutes before losing contact, the pilot told air traffic control that he was approaching threatening clouds, but was denied permission to climb to a higher altitude because of heavy air traffic.
Despite an intensive international search-and-recovery operation, just 31 bodies have been found so far, in large part because of bad weather.
However, after detecting what appears to be a massive part of the fuselage on Saturday, officials said it was possible that many passengers and crew would be found inside the wreckage.
Divers waited for breaks in the weather yesterday to reach the site, but rolling seas stirred up silt and mud, leaving them with zero visibility, Indonesian National Search and Rescue Agency Marshal Henry Bambang Soelistyo.
They were forced to turn back because conditions were so bad.
“At this moment, it’s impossible to send any divers,” he said. “We’ll wait until the weather gets better.”
Twenty airplanes and helicopters were deployed yesterday, with 27 ships from Indonesia, Japan, Malaysia, Singapore and the US. All were searching for any sign of the all-important black boxes and pieces of the Airbus A320.
The investigation got a huge boost this weekend when sonar equipment identified five large objects on the seabed in the search area, but no images have been captured confirming they are part of the AirAsia plane.
The biggest piece of debris, measuring 18m long and 5.4m wide, appeared to be part of the fuselage, Soelistyo said.
Suspected parts also were seen on beaches during an aerial survey.
Following yesterday’s chapel service, Edo Anggradinata, 52, said he was finally starting to let go of the hope that his sister and her two children had survived.
“My mind is still in a daze,” he said. “If there is a miracle, I hope they are alive, but I know this is tough. I just pray that we find their bodies.”
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