Searchers Recover At Least 30 Bodies From Missing Air Asia Wreckage

This is so sad.

Searchers Recover At Least 30 Bodies From Air Asia Flight

According to ABC News reports:

At least 30 bodies of AirAsia Flight 8501 victims have been recovered, authorities said, as ships with sensitive equipment searched for the plane’s fuselage.

Five of the victims were found still strapped in their seats, Indonesian navy official Col. Yayan Sofiyan said.

Bambang Soelistyo, head of Indonesia’s National Search and Rescue Agency, said the search would be stepped up as long as the weather allowed.

“We will focus on underwater detection,” said Soelistyo, adding ships from Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore and the United States had been on the scene from before dawn today to try to pinpoint the wreckage and the all-important black boxes, or the flight data and cockpit voice recorders.

The Airbus A320 crashed into the Java Sea Sunday with 162 people on board. A number of the bodies were found by a U.S. Navy ship, said Suryadi B. Supriyadi, operation coordinator for the National Search and Rescue Agency.

Bad weather has made search conditions very difficult and there are forecasts of rain, strong, winds and waves up to 13 feet high up until Sunday. Because of the strong currents debris is being quickly swept along.

Sadly, we still don’t know how the crash even occurred, but it looks like weather played a major role:

It’s unclear what brought down the plane during its flight from Surabaya to Singapore. It lost contact with air traffic controllers over the Java Sea shortly after the pilots requested a change of flight plan because of weather.

So far, an evacuation slide, a life jacket, an emergency side door and some luggage have been recovered. The water is less than 100 feet deep in the area where the objects were found, officials said.

There were 155 passengers on board, with 137 adults, 17 children and one infant. Also on board were two pilots, four cabin crew and one engineer, according to the airline.

It really hits home when they break down the passengers according to age right? Our prayers are with the victim’s families.

So sad.

NDN/APImages