Divers waiting to inspect the possible wreck of an AirAsia Indonesia jet off Borneo were unable to resume operations yesterday because of heavy seas, while an aviation official said it could take a week to find the black box flight recorders.
Crews were on standby to descend to a large object detected by sonar on the ocean floor at a depth between 30m and 50m.
Rescuers believe it is AirAsia Flight QZ8501, an Airbus A320-200 carrying 162 people when it went missing on Sunday en route from Surabaya, Indonesia, to Singapore.
Photo: Reuters
“I am hoping that the latest information is correct and aircraft has been found,” AirAsia chief executive Tony Fernandes tweeted yesterday. “Please, all hope together. This is so important.”
However, Indonesian National Committee for Transportation Safety air safety investigator Toos Sanitiyoso said the flight data and voice recorders could be found within a week.
“The main thing is to find the main area of the wreckage and then the black boxes,” he told reporters.
None of the tell-tale black box “pings” had been detected, he said.
“There are two steps of finding the black box. One is we try to find the largest portion of the wreckage,” he said.
Divers would not be sent into the water without a target, search official Sunarbowo Sandi said.
“They wouldn’t go in without it,” he said. “The divers are not searching.”
Diver commander Lieutenant Edi Tirkayasa said the weather was making the operation harder.
“What is most difficult is finding the location where the plane fell — checking whether the aircraft is really there,” he said. “This is very difficult, even with sophisticated equipment. With weather like this, who knows? We are still hopeful and optimistic that they will find it. They must.”
An Indonesian official said on Wednesday that none of the bodies recovered so far had been wearing a life jacket.
“There is no victim that has been found wearing a life jacket,” said Tatang Zaenudin, deputy head of operations at Indonesia’s National Search and Rescue Agency.
“We found a body at 8:20am and a life jacket at 10:32am, so there was a time difference. This is the latest information we have,” he added.
The same official told Reuters earlier that one of the recovered bodies had been wearing a life jacket.
At least seven bodies have been recovered.
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