By Ainur Romah
JAKARTA
Indonesian navy divers have retrieved a further six bodies from the fuselage of AirAsia QZ8501 that crashed in the Java Sea in December with 162 people on board.
Local media reported the director of operations for the country's National Search and Rescue Agency as saying Friday that the bodies were retrieved from main body of the fuselage at a depth of 30 meters in the sea bed.
"The main body of the plane was broken into many fragments, and some of the bodies were found buried in pieces of the fuselage," First Marshal SB Supriyadi said as quoted by online media Detik.com.
According to Supriyadi, the fuselage was initially estimated at a length of 56 meters, but it has now broken into 10 meter pieces.
He added that the main piece of fuselage is attached to the right wing.
"Hopefully tomorrow the weather is good so more bodies can be retrieved," he said.
Indonesia Army Commander, General Moeldoko said he will coordinate with the National Transportation Safety Commission to determine whether the main piece needs to be lifted to the surface or not.
"When the divers entered the cabin [Friday], there were a lot of obstructions, so they could see clearly how many bodies are still left inside the main piece of fuselage," he said.
AirAsia Flight QZ8501 crashed into the Java Sea off the Indonesian island of Borneo on Dec. 28 last year killing all 162 people on board as it flew from Surabaya in Indonesia to Singapore.
So far, the search and rescue team has managed to evacuate 65 bodies.
Investigators are analyzing data from the aircraft's two ‘black box’ flight recorders to determine why it crashed. Terrorism has been ruled unlikely.
On Tuesday, Transport Minister Ignasius Jonan said the flight had climbed at a rate outside the Airbus A320-200’s safety parameters immediately before it disappeared from radar.
The last contact with air traffic controllers was when the pilot asked to climb from 32,000 feet to 38,000 feet to avoid storm clouds. The flight was denied immediate permission due to heavy air traffic in the area and four minutes later the plane disappeared.
