Indonesian divers have been able to enter the fuselage of AirAsia flight QZ8501 for the first time, retrieving six bodies.
The operations chief at Indonesia’s National Search and Rescue Agency, Suryadi Bambang Supriyadi, said the divers spotted some more bodies inside the fuselage of the AirAsia jetliner that crashed last month into the Java Sea.
“Today we have evacuated six bodies from inside the fuselage,” Supriyadi said on Friday. “Some other bodies are still there but their position among other debris made it difficult for our divers.”
A total of 65 bodies have now been recovered from the AirAsia jet, which crashed on 28 December with 162 people on board while flying from Surabaya, Indonesia’s second largest city, to Singapore. Authorities believe many of the other bodies are still inside the fuselage.
Rescuers have been struggling with strong currents and poor visibility in their attempts to lift the fuselage of the Airbus A320 and what appears to be the plane’s cockpit from the seabed, at a depth of 30m(100ft).
Bad weather is a suspected factor in the crash. The pilots asked to climb from 32,000ft to 38,000ft to avoid threatening clouds, but were denied permission by air traffic controllers because of heavy air traffic.
The transport minister, Ignasius Jonan, told the Indonesian parliament earlier this week that radar data showed the plane was climbing at an abnormally high rate, then dropped rapidly and disappeared. No distress signal was sent.
Officials of the National Transportation Safety Committee have ruled out sabotage. Investigators are analysing data from the aircraft’s cockpit voice and flight data recorders with advisers from Airbus, the plane’s manufacturer.
The head of the committee, Tatang Kurniadi, said a preliminary report on the accident is expected to be submitted to the International Civil Aviation Organisation next week.
He said a full analysis of what went wrong with the plane could take up to a year.
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