AirAsia search turns up 4 large objects
Posted January 3, 2015 2:39 pm.
This article is more than 5 years old.
Search teams have found four large objects in their hunt for an AirAsia plane that crashed last Sunday, an Indonesia official said at a press conference on Saturday night.
Two large objects believed to be parts of the crashed AirAsia flight QZ8501 were found on Friday night and early Saturday. One measured 9.4 metres long, 4.8 metres wide and 0.4 metres high, while the other was 7.2 metres long, 0.9 metres wide and 0.5 metres high.
Another two objects were found on Saturday afternoon.
“At 13:30, the rescue vessel found a big object – 18 metres long, 5.4 metres wide and 2.2 metres high,” said Bambang Soelistyo, head of the Indonesian National Search and Rescue Office.
“Later at 14:25, they found another one that was 12.4 metres long, 0.6 metres wide and 0.5 metres high. All of the four objects were found in the priority search area.”
Soelistyo said they have not yet been able to identify which parts of the plane the four objects might belong to because the high current velocity in the search area is preventing an underwater camera from taking pictures.
“Because the velocity of the current is two nautical miles per hour, the underwater remote device cannot take photos,” said Soelistyo.
According to the press conference, the priorities for the next step of the search operation will be to find larger parts of the plane, recover bodies and search for the black boxes.
So far 30 bodies have been recovered by the search-and-rescue team.
A total of 60 vessels, eight planes and four helicopters have been deployed for the search-and-rescue operation.
AirAsia flight QZ8501 crashed on Sunday morning on its way to Singapore from Indonesia’s city of Surabaya.
