Search teams battle rough weather in hunt for AirAsia wreck

FE Team | Published: January 03, 2015 00:00:00 | Updated: November 30, 2026 06:01:00

PANGKALAN BUN, Jan 2 (agencies): Ships and aircraft criss-crossed the seas off Borneo Friday hunting for the wreck of an Indonesia AirAsia passenger jet, but bad weather was again hindering the search for the plane and the black box flight recorders that should reveal why it crashed.
Officials said more than 20 bodies have now been recovered, along with pieces of the broken-up plane, in the Indonesian-led search for Flight QZ8501 that is concentrated on 1,575 square nautical miles of the northern Java Sea.
Strong winds and heavy seas have stopped divers from looking for the fuselage of the Airbus A320-200, which plunged into the water on Sunday while en route from Indonesia's second-biggest city Surabaya to Singapore with 162 people on board.
"The waves could reach five meters this afternoon. Higher than yesterday," said air force Puma helicopter pilot Flight Captain Tatag Onne, who has been flying missions to recover bodies and debris from the sea. French and Singaporean investigators joined the hunt for the Airbus A320-200, which disappeared from radar during a storm Sunday en route from Indonesia's second city of Surabaya to Singapore with 162 people on board.
The search teams have deployed side-scan sonar equipment to survey the seabed and pinger locators to fine-tune their search for the plane's black boxes, crucial to determining the why the plane crash into the Java Sea off Borneo.
Rough weather has in recent days hampered the search for the plane's fuselage, which is believed to be in relatively shallow water of around 25-32 metres (82-105 feet).
Search and rescue agency chief Bambang Soelistyo said Friday's operation was focused on an area of 1,575 square nautical miles-a tenth of the size of Thursday's search-with 29 ships and 17 aircraft engaged in the operation.
"There are two main tasks in this priority sector: first, to locate the biggest part of the plane's body," he told a press conference.
"The second task is to find the position of the black boxes, or flight recorders, which will be carried out by the KNKT (National Transportation Safety Committee) which start working today."