Sunday Times 2
Searchers find ‘big parts’ of crashed AirAsia plane
View(s):PANGKALAN BUN, Indonesia, Jan 03 (AFP) – Recovery teams have found two big parts of AirAsia Flight 8501, which crashed into the sea last weekend with 162 people on board, Indonesia’s top search official said Saturday.
News of the discovery came after Indonesia’s transport ministry said the plane had been flying on an unauthorised schedule when it crashed, and the airliner has now been suspended from flying the route from the city of Surabaya to Singapore.
Caskets containing the remains of AirAsia QZ8501 passengers are carried to a military transport plane before being transported to Surabaya, where the flight originated. Reuters/Whiteside
The parts of the plane were found in the Java Sea off the island of Borneo late Friday night, raising hopes that the remaining bodies and the black boxes, crucial to determining the cause of the crash, will soon be located.
“With the discovery of an oil spill and two big parts of the aircraft, I can assure you these are the parts of the AirAsia plane we have been looking for,” search and rescue agency chief Bambang Soelistyo told reporters.
So far recovery teams have found 30 bodies of those killed when the Airbus A320-200 went down early Sunday during a storm, and Soelistyo said they were now sending divers to the spot where plane parts had been found to try to recover the remaining bodies.
“The main focus today is to find and evacuate victims,” he said.
The director general of air transport, Djoko Murjatmodjo, said AirAsia’s permit to fly the route of Flight 8501 had been frozen because the plane had been on an unauthorised schedule.
“It violated the route permit given, the schedule given, that’s the problem,” Murjatmodjo told AFP, adding that the permit for the route would be suspended until investigations were completed.
A statement from transport ministry spokesman J.A. Barata said AirAsia had not been permitted to fly the Surabaya-Singapore route on Sundays and had not asked to change its schedule.
It was unclear how the airliner, which has yet to officially respond to the ministry’s statement, had been able to fly without the necessary authorisation.
The plane was operated by AirAsia Indonesia, a unit of Malaysia-based AirAsia, which previously had a solid safety record.
Recovery teams, which have been hampered by rough weather in recent days, on Friday narrowed their search to an area of 45 by 35 nautical miles centred about 75 nautical miles southwest of Pangkalan Bun, a town in Central Kalimantan on Borneo.