Attempt to raise AirAsia Flight 8501 fuselage aborted

By Ainur Romah

JAKARTA, Indonesia 

An attempt to raise the largest piece of fuselage of AirAsia Flight 8501 was aborted Saturday, but as the plane cleared the sea floor divers were able to retrieve four more bodies from the wreckage site.

The director of operations for Indonesia's National Search and Rescue Agency said that they started to hoist the piece successfully early in the morning, but had to give up due to equipment failure.

"We were not successful today. The sling snapped off so the main body fell back to the sea floor," said First Marshal SB Supriyadi, as quoted by online media Detik.com.

He said that a team of divers had tried to re-attach the lifting bag but the current rendered the task impossible.

Supriyadi added that a sonar scan had detected an object "suspected to be the cockpit" of the plane about 500 meters away from the fuselage.

He said it was uncertain if it could be raised from the sea, but said it could be safely assumed that the bodies of the pilot and co-pilot were still inside.

The operation to hoist the fuselage from the sea floor began at around 9.31 a.m. (0200GMT), bodies, debris, and passenger's belongings -- which had been trapped inside the wreckage -- breaking free and floating to the surface.

Detik.com reported that the items included an orange-colored bag containing biscuits, combs, hair rollers, and an iPhone with earphones still attached.

Supriyadi said that the disturbing of the wreckage had allowed them to retrieve the corpses of three women and one man.

"So far, 69 bodies have been found," he added.

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.

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.

Search operations were halted Saturday due to bad weather but will continue -- weather permitting -- early Sunday.