AirAsia rescuers fail in lift attempt
January 24, 2015
Rescue crews lifted the fuselage of the crashed AirAsia plane using inflated lifting bags on Saturday before bad weather and strong currents caused it to sink back to the ocean floor.
"It briefly moved, but because of the strong currents the straps were detached from the fuselage, search operation chief Suryadi Supriyadi said.
The operation to bring the main section of the plane to the surface would continue on Sunday, he added.
Supriyadi also said four bodies had been recovered from the wreckage Saturday, bringing the confirmed death toll of flight QZ5801 to 69.
Trying weather conditions over the past week have prevented rescuers reaching the fuselage of the Airbus A320-200, which crashed into the Java Sea last month.
On Friday, a mass of wires and seats floating within the fuselage prevented searchers from entering to find more bodies.
"The divers said it was dark inside, the seats were floating about and the wires were like a tangled yarn," Supriyadi said.
He added that the cockpit was located about 500 meters (546 yards) from the fuselage at a depth of about 30 meters and the bodies of the flight's pilot and co-pilot may be inside.
"Divers would evacuate (them) if they are there," he said.
Rescuers hope once the main section was raised, it will be easier to inspect the inside of the main body and retrieve more bodies, he added.
The flight's black boxes, the cockpit voice recorder and flight data recorder, were retrieved last week. Investigators are analyzing them for clues as to what caused the plane to crash on December 28 with 162 people on board while flying between Surabaya, Indonesia's second largest city, to Singapore.
The head of Indonesia's National Transportation Safety Committee, Tatang Kurniadi, has ruled out sabotage and said a preliminary report about the accident is expected to be submitted to the International Civil Aviation Organization next week.
A full report of what happened on December 28 could take up to a year, Kurniadi said.
jlw/sms (Reuters, AP, AFP)