AirAsia Flight 8501: Indonesia jet recovery; 7 bodies were found

AirAsia Flight 8501: Indonesia jet recovery; 7 bodies were found

Bad weather hindered efforts to recover victims of AirAsia Flight 8501 Wednesday, and sent wreckage drifting far from the crash site, as grieving relatives “surrounded in darkness” gathered in an airport and prayed for the strength to move forward.

SEE PICS: AirAsia QZ8501 plane’s mystery ends with grief and distress for relatives
The massive hunt for 162 people who vanished Sunday aboard the Airbus A320 from Surabaya, Indonesia to Singapore, was severely limited due to heavy rain, wind and thick clouds. Seven bodies, including a flight attendant still wearing her red AirAsia uniform, have been recovered, said Indonesia’s Search and Rescue Agency chief Henry Bambang Soelistyo.

The weather prevented divers from retrieving bodies in the Java Sea on Wednesday, and helicopters were largely grounded, but ships were still scouring the area. Sonar images identified what appeared to be large parts of the plane, but strong currents were moving the wreckage. “It seems all the wreckage found has drifted more than 50 kilometers from yesterday’s location,” said Vice Air Marshal Sunarbowo Sandi, search and rescue coordinator in Pangkalan Bun on Borneo island, the closest town to the site. “We are expecting those bodies will end up on beaches.” The airliner’s disappearance halfway through the two-hour flight triggered an international search for the aircraft involving dozens of planes, ships and helicopters from numerous countries. It is still unclear what brought the plane down.

Recovering bodies was expected to remain difficult for the near future. Indonesia’s meteorology and geophysics agency predicted that the conditions would worsen, with more intense rains, through Friday. The aircraft’s cockpit voice and flight data recorders, or black boxes, must be recovered before officials can start determining what caused the crash. Items recovered so far include a life jacket, an emergency window, children’s shoes, a blue suitcase and backpacks filled with food. Simple wooden boxes containing bodies, with signs numbered 001 and 002, were unloaded in Pangkalan Bun, with flowers placed on top. Nearly all the passengers were Indonesian. The country is predominantly Muslim, but most of those aboard were Christians of Chinese descent.