Divers resume search for AirAsia wreck

Blue skies and calmer waters off the Indonesian coast would allow divers to investigate the fuselage of the AirAsia plane, which crashed on its way from Indonesia's Surabaya to Singapore on Sunday.

"It's possible that more bodies are in the fuselage…so it's a race against time and weather," Sunarbowo Sandi, Indonesia's vice air marshal and search and rescue coordinator, told the Associated Press.

At least eight bodies were recovered off the coast of Borneo island where a sonar has detected a large object on the seafloor. So far, rough seas have prevented divers from investigating the object and finding the black box, which could hold crucial information on why the plane went down.

Daunting task

On Wednesday, Sandi told reporters that wreckage and bodies had "drifted around 50 kilometers," or around 30 miles, and that his team was expecting the bodies to wash up on the beaches around the Java Sea. "That is why we are searching all the beaches, because the current is moving," he said.

Some of the victims' relatives were in Surabaya hoping to learn more about the fate of their loved ones. Investigators were gathering their DNA and blood samples, to be used in the process of identification.

Late Wednesday, as the rest of the region celebrated the start of a new year, relatives and loved ones held a candlelight vigil for the victims of the disaster in the hours leading up to midnight.

Flight 8501 went missing on its way from Surabaya to Singapore early Sunday morning, crashing into the Java Sea and presumably killing all 162 people on board.

The jet's last communication suggested that the pilots had wanted to change course, a request which was denied because of heavy traffic. A few minutes later, the plane went off the radar. The pilots did not send a distress signal and it's still unclear what brought the plane down.

mg/cmk (AP, Reuters)