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Tag: airasia flight 8501
AirAsia Fuselage Found By Search Ship, Singapore Says

AirAsia Fuselage Found By Search Ship, Singapore Says

By Ahmad Pathoni, dpa (TNS)

JAKARTA, Indonesia — The fuselage of the AirAsia plane that crashed off Indonesia last month has been found, Singapore’s Defence Minister Ng Eng Hen said Wednesday.

“Chief of Navy RADM Lai Chung Han just informed me that one of SAF’s (Singapore Armed Forces) ships, the MV Swift Rescue, has located the fuselage of the AirAsia plane in the Java Sea,” Ng said on Facebook.

Images from the scene “show part of the wing and words on the fuselage,” he said.

There has been no confirmation that the bodies of more victims are inside, although Indonesia’s search operations director Suryadi Supriyadi said he believed the fuselage contained many victims of the crash.

So far, 48 bodies have been recovered after the crash on December 28, and no survivors.

Singapore is among ten countries involved in the search operation for AirAsia flight QZ8501, which went down en route from Surabaya to Singapore with 162 people on board.

The fuselage’s discovery came after divers retrieved the flight data recorder and the cockpit voice recorder from the seabed this week.

Data from the two recorders, known as the black boxes, will be examined to determine the chain of events leading to the fatal crash.

The National Search and Rescue Agency chief Bambang Sulistyo said the large-scale operation was winding down, but the search for bodies would continue as long as needed.

AFP Photo

Indonesia Expands Search For Bodies From AirAsia Crash

Indonesia Expands Search For Bodies From AirAsia Crash

Pangkalan Bun (Indonesia) (AFP) – Recovery teams expanded their search in the Java Sea on Monday as they raced to find bodies and wreckage from AirAsia Flight 8501, which they fear have drifted in rough weather that has hampered operations over the past week.

As the massive relief operation entered its ninth day, officials were hopeful for a break in poor conditions to send divers down to the area where large parts of the crashed Airbus A320-200 have been found.

Only 34 bodies have so far been recovered from the disaster scene. A total of 162 people were onboard when the plane crashed into the sea during on a storm on December 28, en route from the Indonesian city of Surabaya to Singapore.

“Hopefully the weather is good today so that the ROVs (remotely-operated underwater vehicles) and other instruments can be used and our divers can go to the seabed again,” search and rescue official S.B. Supriyadi told AFP.

He said he was hopeful they would find “all the parts” of the aircraft Monday and get its exact coordinates underwater.

“Yesterday when our divers went down, the visibility was very bad,” Supriyadi added.

Recovery crews nonetheless made some progress on Sunday, retrieving four more bodies and locating a fifth large chunk of the plane.

The discoveries came after Indonesia’s meterological agency said ice likely caused the plane’s engine to stall, and as the pilot’s daughter urged the public not to blame her father.

Searchers are hunting for the “black box” flight data recorders to determine the cause of the crash.

Supriyadi said the search, which is being assisted by several countries including the United States and Russia, would expand eastwards Monday on suspicions that strong currents have caused parts of the plane to drift.

Several aircraft were making their way from Pangkalan Bun, a town on the island of Borneo with the nearest airstrip to the wreckage, to scour the sea’s surface. Speed boats were sweeping the coastline for signs of bodies that may have drifted to shore.

Supriyadi said the team was assessing whether to lift the discovered plane parts off the seabed or just find the “black box” flight data recorders.

“We hope to find the black boxes as soon as possible,” he said.

“If the tail is upside down and the door to the black box is in the mud, we need to dig the seafloor and that’s difficult. We are hoping the door to the black box is facing upwards so it is easier for us to fetch it.”

An initial report by Indonesia’s meteorological agency BMKG suggested the weather was the “triggering factor” behind the accident.

The report referred to infra-red satellite pictures that showed the plane was passing through cloud top temperatures of minus 80 to minus 85 degrees Celsius.

But it remained unclear why other planes on similar routes were unaffected by the weather, and other analysts said there was not enough information to explain the disaster until the flight recorders were recovered.

The operation has prioritized finding the bodies of the victims, of whom 155 were Indonesian, with three South Koreans, one Singaporean, one Malaysian, one Briton and a Frenchman — co-pilot Remi Plesel.

Some of the bodies have been found still strapped into their seats.

The daughter of the plane’s pilot, Captain Iriyanto, made a televised plea late Sunday urging people not to blame her father.

“He is just a victim and has not been found yet. My family is now mourning,” said Angela Anggi Ranastianis.

“As a daughter, I cannot accept it. No pilot will harm his passengers,” she told TV One.

In his last communication, experienced former air force pilot Iriyanto said he wanted to change course to avoid the menacing storm system. Then all contact was lost, about 40 minutes after take-off.

Many of the victims’ relatives have gathered to wait for news and prepare funerals in Surabaya, where a crisis center has been set up for identifying bodies.

Indonesia has pledged to investigate alleged flight violations by AirAsia, saying the aircraft had been flying on an unauthorized schedule when it crashed. The airline has now been suspended from flying the Surabaya-Singapore route.

AFP Photo/Adek Berry

Bad Weather Stalls AirAsia Wreckage Search; Seven Bodies Recovered

Bad Weather Stalls AirAsia Wreckage Search; Seven Bodies Recovered

By Shashank Bengali and Ahmad Pathoni, Los Angeles Times (TNS)

JAKARTA, Indonesia — Fighting high winds and choppy waves, recovery teams lifted seven bodies from Indonesian waters Wednesday as naval officials reportedly obtained the first sonar image showing a crashed Indonesia AirAsia jet lying upside down under the sea.

A day after officials confirmed that debris in the Java Sea belonged to Flight 8501, the recovery effort accelerated but was hampered by rough weather similar to what the ill-fated jet encountered on its flight to Singapore on Sunday with 162 people aboard.

“The waves are three meters high (about ten feet) and the wind is 20-24 nautical miles per hour,” Col. Yayan Sofyan, an Indonesian navy officer aboard the Bung Tomo ship, told Metro TV.

“This situation is making it difficult for evacuation.”

Wet conditions and low visibility — common during the ongoing monsoon season in Southeast Asia — have grounded many of the helicopters participating in the multi-nation recovery effort, officials said. Plans to deploy deep-sea “frogmen” divers were scuttled due to “the weather, strong winds and high seas,” said Air Vice Marshal Sunarbowo Sandy, a search official.

Meteorologists said that winds could increase on Thursday to as high as 50 mph, possibly prolonging the agonizing wait for relatives who had gathered in the Indonesian city of Surabaya, the flight’s originating point, to identify bodies.

Early Wednesday, recovery crews pulled the body of a flight attendant, identified as Khairunnisa, still clad in AirAsia’s signature bright red uniform. (Many Indonesians go by only one name.) Two others also had been identified through personal information found on their bodies but the others had not yet been named, Yayan said.

A total of four men and three women were recovered, their bodies intact, search chief Bambang Soelistyo said.

By dusk, five of the seven bodies were still aboard ships in the Java Sea because it was too windy for helicopters to transport them to land.

Two bodies reached the airport in Surabaya in simple caskets bearing cards with the numbers “001” and “002.” A military honor guard solemnly marched the caskets across the tarmac and placed them inside waiting hearses.

There were conflicting reports about whether one of the bodies was found in life jacket, which could have indicated that some passengers knew the flight was in danger. Detik.com, an Indonesian website, quoted a search official as saying a man’s body was found near a life jacket but not wearing it.

Experts said the majority of the 155 passengers and seven crew members likely would not be recovered until dive teams could access the plane’s fuselage because they were likely still strapped into their seats. The pilot would have ordered all aboard to wear seat belts as the aircraft ran into a severe thunderstorm and turbulence less than halfway through the two-hour flight to Singapore, experts said.

“The fact that six or seven bodies have floated to the surface and been recovered could indicate a number of things — that they weren’t strapped in, or their seats may have broken up in the crash and that freed them,” said Geoffrey Thomas, editor in chief of AirlineRatings.com, an airline safety website.

According to multiple reports, an Indonesian navy ship on Wednesday obtained a sonar image of what was believed to be the body of the Airbus A330-200 underwater. The Tempo.co news website reported that the image showed the plane upside down in about 100 feet of water off Indonesia’s Borneo island.

On Tuesday, search officials said surveillance planes had seen “an object that formed a shadow under the sea in the shape of an aircraft,” suggesting much of the plane’s body could be in one piece at the bottom of the Java Sea, which has an average depth of about 150 feet.

AirAsia Chief Executive Tony Fernandes did not confirm that the fuselage had been found and urged patience as the recovery operation progressed.

“There are a lot of rumors going around,” Fernandes told a news conference. “I can confirm that I think the search-and-rescue team has been doing a fantastic job. The weather is not looking good for the next two or three days. The ships are going to operate 24 hours.”

AFP Photo/ Juni Kriswanto

Search For Missing AirAsia Flight 8501 Expands Off Indonesian Coast

Search For Missing AirAsia Flight 8501 Expands Off Indonesian Coast

By Shashank Bengali and Ahmad Pathoni, Los Angeles Times (TNS)

JAKARTA, Indonesia — The first full day of a growing, multi-nation hunt for an AirAsia passenger jet lost over Indonesian waters ended Monday with few clues to its disappearance and a grim acknowledgment by officials that “the worst may have happened.”

Helicopters and surveillance aircraft from Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore and Australia returned to their bases, some after flying 10 hours or more over a choppy Java Sea, the focal point of the search for the airliner that was carrying 162 mostly Indonesian passengers.

The first tantalizing possible traces of the missing Airbus A320-200 – which lost contact with air-traffic control during a two-hour flight to Singapore from the Indonesian city of Surabaya on Sunday morning – were inconclusive or ultimately discounted.

Air Force spokesman Hadi Tjahjanto told The Times that searchers in a helicopter and C-130 plane had seen an oil slick about 105 nautical miles off Indonesia’s Belitung island near the Karimata Strait, which connects the archipelago nation to Singapore.

“We’re checking whether it’s jet fuel or fuel from a ship,” he said.

An Australian Orion aircraft spotted “suspicious objects” in the sea near Nangka island, northeast of the Belitung, about 700 miles from where the plane lost contact, prompting teams to rush toward the area under cloudy skies. But Bambang Soelistyo, the head of Indonesia’s National Search and Rescue Agency, which was leading the effort, said the weak signal detected by the Australian plane came from a personal locator beacon, not the missing jet’s emergency transmitter.

Bambang said that based on the coordinates of Indonesia AirAsia Flight 8501’s last known location, investigators believed it had crashed into the Java Sea north of Jakarta.

“My goal is to locate it as soon as possible,” Bambang told a news conference in Jakarta. “We’re doing the best we can.”

Indonesian Vice President Jusuf Kalla said “bad weather” was hampering the search but expressed hope that the plane would be found.

“We don’t set deadlines. What is important is we find the plane and its passengers,” Kalla said.

Asked about the prospects of finding survivors more than 36 hours after the flight went missing, Kalla said: “We pray for them but we realize the worst may have happened.”

Bambang said teams searched an area comprising roughly 66,000 square miles in four sectors on Sunday, concentrating on a 250-mile-wide stretch of the Java Sea between the Indonesian islands of Sumatra and Borneo. On Monday the search expanded to the north to include the Karimata strait and the coasts of Belitung island and West Kalimantan province, he said.

Indonesia’s armed forces had deployed transport helicopters and naval ships while Malaysia and Singapore had each sent C-130 Hercules transport aircraft and three ships to help ferry teams to and from the search site. Early Monday, Australia’s Orion surveillance aircraft joined the effort.

If wreckage isn’t found at the water’s surface, investigators likely would begin scouring the sea floor for the Airbus A330-200 — probably requiring contributions of advanced ships and equipment from other nations.

“If that’s the case, we’ll have difficulty determining the location because our equipment is not adequate,” Bambang said.

Singapore civil aviation officials said they were preparing to send two teams of specialists and underwater locator beacons to help find the missing jet’s flight data recorders.

China offered to send airlines and ships to join the search and rescue efforts, foreign ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying said in Beijing. South Korea said it would send a surveillance plane later this week, the Yonhap news agency reported.

In Washington, Pentagon officials said Sunday they were ready to assist but had not been asked.

AirAsia executive chief Tony Fernandes defended his airline’s safety record, saying it had carried 220 million passengers in 13 years and never had a fatal accident.

“Until we have a full investigation, we don’t want to speculate,” Fernandes told a news conference in Surabaya. “It’s premature to talk (about what went wrong) at the moment. We are confident in our ability to fly people. We’ll continue to be strong and continue to carry people who never fly before.”

Indonesian transportation ministry Ignasius Jonan said the government would review AirAsia’s operations “to ensure that in the future its activity will be better.” The low-cost carrier, which is based in Malaysia and operates mainly short flights across Southeast Asia, has a strong safety record and is widely regarded as one of the world’s most successful budget airlines.

It was the third air disaster this year involving a Malaysian airline. Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 vanished in March en route to Beijing with 239 people aboard and is still missing, while the same carrier’s Flight 17 was shot down over eastern Ukraine, killing all 298 passengers and crew.

Investigators were hopeful that recovering the flight data recorder would offer clues into the AirAsia plane’s disappearance. The aircraft departed Surabaya roughly on schedule at 5:35 a.m. Sunday but apparently encountered heavy clouds during what is normally the wettest time of the year in Indonesia.

Indonesian transport authorities said the pilot communicated with air-traffic controllers at 6:12 a.m. asking permission to take a left turn off the scheduled flight path and climb from 32,000 feet to 38,000 feet to avoid clouds.

According to multiple reports, the request to raise altitude was denied due to other aircraft in the area. The plane disappeared from radar at 6:18 a.m.

Families of the 155 passengers and seven crew members gathered at Surabaya’s airport and Changi international airport in Singapore where AirAsia and government officials had set up crisis centers. Among those on board were 17 children and one infant, the airline said.

“AirAsia Indonesia’s primary focus remains on the families,” the airline said Monday. AirAsia Indonesia CEO Sunu Widyatmoko was in Surabaya meeting with families while other airline officials were doing the same in Singapore, it said.

A tearful Hartatik Sukorini told Indonesia’s TVOne news channel that her daughter Dona was on the plane and said she was hoping for “a miracle.”

“I pray to Allah that she is safe and protected,” she said. “She is a good daughter and never causes me any trouble.”

AFP Photo/ Juni Kriswanto