JAKARTA, Jan 25 – Indonesian salvage teams failed to raise the fuselage of Indonesia AirAsia Flight QZ8501 from the sea bed, but recovered four more bodies from the wreckage of the crashed jet. The bid to raise the fuselage came a day after divers were able to enter the main section of the plane, which crashed in the Java Sea last month, for the first time.
Difficult weather conditions for the past week had stopped rescuers reaching the main part of the Airbus A320-200 since it was spotted on the seabed by a military vessel earlier this month. “We were not successful today. The sling snapped off so the main body fell back to the sea floor,” S.B. Supriyadi, a rescue agency official, told AFP.
The operation to lift the main body will resume tomorrow. The rescue agency official also said a sonar scan had detected an object “suspected to be the cockpit” of the plane about 500 metres away from the fuselage. But the search teams will prioritise floating the main body before verifying the object suspected to be the cockpit, Supriyadi added.
