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| Bad weather halts recovery of bodies from AirAsia flight |
Surabaya
(Indonesia) (AFP) - Soldiers acting as pall bearers Wednesday carried coffins
containing the first two bodies from AirAsia Flight QZ8501 into Indonesia's
Surabaya airport, from which the ill-fated plane departed, as sombre relatives
gave their DNA to help identify loved ones.
The bodies
were taken from an air force plane to a military ambulance to be transported to
a hospital for examination and identification -- but many exhausted families
were left waiting for news as bad weather hampered search efforts.
Officials
had hoped to recover most of the bodies but rough conditions made it difficult
for helicopters to fly over the area in the Java Sea where several corpses and
debris from the Airbus A320-200 were found a day earlier.
After
taking off on Sunday in Surabaya, Indonesia's second-biggest city, the plane
was destined for Singapore.
But it was
never to arrive, and on Wednesday the city was also the venue for drained and
emotional relatives of the 162 people on board to gather at a crisis centre to
hand over documents and medical records.
Among them
was Hadi Widjaja, 60, who was preparing a Muslim funeral for his son Andreas
and daughter-in-law Enny Wahyuni.
"I am
anxious to know if the rescuers have found their bodies. The president has said
that they will do the best they can to find them," Widjaja told AFP.
"But
if they really cannot find them, I will scatter flowers in the sea here as a
way to say goodbye."
Relatives
and residents gathered in Surabaya for a candlelit vigil in the hours before
midnight while in Jakarta New Year festivities started solemnly with a prayer
for the victims.
Police in
Surabaya said they had taken DNA from 30 immediate family members to assist
with the identification of bodies at a local hospital, to which the crisis
centre is also being shifted.
'We
turned back'
Seven
bodies have been recovered from the sea so far, including a female in a flight
attendant's uniform, officials said, and all of them were now expected to reach
Surabaya Thursday.
Storms
delayed the start of operations on Wednesday and helicopters were later forced
to return to the base in Pangkalan Bun, the town with the nearest airstrip to
the crash site.
"For
the safety reasons, we turned back," helicopter pilot Tatang Onne Setiawan
told AFP.
"Besides
the evacuation of the bodies, we also planned to search for bigger parts of the
plane."
Boat-based
teams called off the search for bodies as night fell, but ships with sonar
equipment were continuing to look for the plane's fuselage.
AirAsia
boss Tony Fernandes denied reports that sonar images had located the aircraft
on the seabed.
"There
is no sonar, nothing, some visual identification but nothing confirmed,"
he told reporters.
He said
however that the search team was "feeling more comfortable. They are
beginning to know where it is".
During
Tuesday's searches, an air force plane saw a "shadow" on the seabed
believed to be the missing plane, where search efforts have since been
concentrated.
Debris
found from the aircraft, which crashed into the Java Sea southwest of the
island of Borneo during a storm, included an exit door and several suitcases.
"There
were snacks, instant porridge, and three umbrellas," commander of the Bung
Tomo warship, Colonel Yayan, told a local news channel, referring to the 28
items that had been retrieved.
According
to search and rescue officials AFP spoke with, none of the victims found so far
was wearing a lifejacket.
The hunt is
now on for the plane's black boxes, which are key to determining the cause of
the crash.
"We
have concerns to secure the flight recorders, believed to be with parts of the
plane we haven't found," said National Search and Rescue Agency chief
Bambang Soelistyo.
Britain's
Air Accidents Investigation Branch has sent an investigator carrying
"specialist technical equipment" that can help to locate flight
recorders.
Accompanying
Singaporean experts, the investigator is travelling to the site on an
Indonesian naval vessel, according to the British embassy in Jakarta.
Before
take-off the pilot of QZ8501 had asked for permission to fly at a higher
altitude to avoid the storm, but his request was not approved due to other
planes above him on the popular route, according to AirNav, Indonesia's air
traffic control.
International search effort
In his last
communication, the pilot said he wanted to change course to avoid the menacing
storm system. Then all contact was lost, about 40 minutes after the plane had
taken off.
The missing
plane was operated by AirAsia Indonesia, a unit of Malaysia-based AirAsia,
which had previously earned a solid safety record.
Of the 162
passengers and crew on board Flight QZ8501, 155 were Indonesian.
President
Joko Widodo met the victims' families in Surabaya on Tuesday and promised
"a massive search" effort, with priority given to recovering bodies
of the passengers and crew.
The United
States, Australia, Singapore, South Korea and Malaysia are among the countries
helping in the search effort, which comes at the end of an awful year for
Malaysian air travel.
After the
disappearance of Flight MH370 in March, en route from from Kuala Lumpur to
Beijing with 239 passengers and crew, another Malaysia Airlines flight -- MH17
-- was shot down over Ukraine in July, killing all 298 on board.
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