Divers focus on AirAsia fuselage in search for bodies

Divers headed back below the surface on Wednesday morning, as experts sought to piece together the chain of events that led to the crash of AirAsia flight QZ8501 in late December.

Air Commodore Suryadi Supriyadi - a coordinator of the search - said families had not given up hope that the bodies of their loved ones might be recovered. Most of the victims are believed to still be trapped inside the fuselage. Only 48 bodies have so far been recovered of the 162 people on the flight list.

Scores of divers were investigating the object thought to be the jet's main body - spotted on sonar scans and located some 3 kilometers (under 2 miles) from where the plane's tail was found.

"We believe there are still many bodies there," said Supriyadi. "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."

Scaling-down of operations

Indonesia's National Search and Rescue Agency chief, Henry Bambang Soelistyo, said that - although the search for bodies would go on - the large-scale operation was close to winding down.

The sub-aquatic team retrieved the plane's flight data recorder and cockpit voice recorder from the seabed on Monday and Tuesday, respectively. Data from both black boxes could help investigators work out the sequence of events that led to the accident.

The flight was en-route from Surabaya to Singapore when it crashed into the Java Sea on December 28. Indonesia's meteorological agency has said bad weather may have been the cause, but the black box recorders might hold the definitive answer.

rc/kms (AFP, dpa, AP)