[ 2014-12-31 ]

AirAsia body found ‘wearing a lifejacket’
Search teams have recovered a body from the downed
AirAsia jet wearing a lifejacket, raising new
questions about how the disaster unfolded.
Experts suggested that the jetliner probably
suffered a sudden and catastrophic failure after
it disappeared while heading into storm clouds on
Sunday on a flight between the Indonesian city of
Surabaya and Singapore.
Seven bodies have already been retrieved from the
Java Sea, most of whom were clothed, suggesting
that the plane may have still been intact when it
hit the water.
The new discovery of one person in a lifejacket
suggests that at least some of those on board had
time to react and may even have been alive when
the plane crash-landed in the sea.
“This morning we recovered a total of four
bodies and one of them was wearing a
lifejacket,” Tatang Zaenudin, an official with
the Indonesia’s search and rescue agency, told
Reuters.
He declined to speculate on what the find might
mean.
Bambang Soelistyo, the head of the national search
and rescue agency, said that retrieval teams were
searching for the plane’s black boxes, which
could offer vital data about the cause of the
disaster.
Bad weather whipped up high waves on the Java Sea
crash site and hampered efforts to retrieve the
bodies of all 162 people and wreckage on
Wednesday, causing further anguish for relatives
hoping to organise funerals.
Hadi Widjaja, 60, whose son Andreas and
daughter-in-law Enny Wahyuni were on the plane,
was among those hoping for news.
“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,” he
said.
“But if they really cannot find them, I will
scatter flowers in the sea here as a way to say
goodbye.”
Officials have promised a huge recovery operation
from the site, and are already making plans to
identify the dead.
Police in Surabaya said they had taken DNA from 30
immediate family members to assist with the
identification of bodies, which is set to take
place at a hospital in Surabaya.
Work has already started to identify those pulled
from the water, including one stewardess who was
recognisable through her trademark uniform.
Officials say they are confident that a large dark
shape detected on the sea bed near where bodies
and debris was found yesterday is the wreckage of
the jet, lying in waters 30-50 metres (100-165ft)
deep.
Singapore said it was sending two underwater
beacon detectors to try to pick up pings from the
boxes, which contain cockpit voice and flight data
recorders.
The plane disappeared on Sunday evening, minutes
after the pilots said they were heading into a
storm and asked to climb above dense clouds. They
did not send a distress signal.
Experts say the evidence pointed to a fast and
catastrophic failure on board, and suggested that
the plane may have stalled.
“The fact that the debris appears fairly
contained suggests the aircraft broke up when it
hit the water, rather than in the air,” said
Neil Hansford, a former pilot and chairman of
Strategic Aviation Solutions, a consultancy
company.
Online discussion among pilots has centred on
unconfirmed secondary radar data from Malaysia
that suggested the aircraft was climbing at a
speed of 353 knots, about 100 knots too slow, and
that it might have stalled.
Investigators are focusing initially on whether
the crew took too long to request permission to
climb, or could have ascended on their own
initiative earlier, said a source close to the
inquiry, adding that poor weather could have
played a part as well.
A Qantas pilot with 25 years of experience flying
in the region said the discovery of the debris
field relatively close to the last known radar
plot of the plane pointed to an aerodynamic stall.
One possibility is that the plane’s instruments
iced up, giving the pilots inaccurate readings.
Tony Fernandes, the chief executive of AirAsia,
said the crash was his “worst nightmare”
yesterday as he expressed his sympathies to the
families of the dead.
“This is a scar with me for the rest of my
life,” he said.
Of the 162 people on board the missing AirAsia
flight, 155 were Indonesian. Other nationalities
included South Korean, Singaporean, Malaysian and
one British man, Chi Man Choi. The Singapore-based
executive was travelling with his two-year old
daughter, Zoe. His wife and their eldest child had
caught an earlier flight. Seventeen of those on
board were children.
The disappearance of the flight had capped a
disastrous year for Malaysian–affiliated
airlines. It comes after the disappearance of
flight MH370 with 239 on board in March, and the
downing of a second of the carrier’s planes in
July over Ukraine in an apparent attack by
Russian-backed rebels.

Source - The Times(UK)

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