AirAsia confirms debris from doomed plane; CEO says ‘words cannot express’ sorrow, Recovery teams pulled wreckage and bodies from the sea off Indonesia on Tuesday after an intensive three-day search finally yielded the grim fate of a missing passenger jet that plunged from storm-laced skies with 162 people aboard.
Officials from the carrier AirAsia confirmed the debris was from the plane that disappeared Sunday moments after the pilot asked to climb to a higher altitude in an apparent attempt to avoid rough weather.
“We are sorry to be here today under these tragic circumstances,” said AirAsia executive Sunu Widyatmoko in a statement issued in the Indonesian city of Surabaya, where the plane departed for Singapore.
Indonesia’s president, Joko Widodo, thanked the international effort mobilized for the search, and then shifted his comments to the grieving families.Even as bodies and various flotsam were pulled from the Java Sea, experts prepared for the next step: trying to reach what was left of the Airbus A320-200 in waters up to 100 feet deep.
Indonesia authorities said divers and sonar-equipped ships headed to the site, about 100 miles southwest of the coast of Borneo. The top goal is recovering more bodies when operations resume at first light on Wednesday — an effort that has been complicated by waves up to 10 feet high.
But officials also sought the plane’s voice and flight data recorder, the so-called black box, in hopes of gaining clues on the cause of the crash.
A former accident investigator, John Cox, said the recorder — if found — would likely be sent for analysis by other countries, such as the United States or Australia, that have more advanced decoding technology. It could take several days to fully study the data, he added.
“In those boxes will be story of what brought down the AirAsia flight,” said Cox, a former captain for US Airways and now chief executive of the Washington-based consulting firm Safety Operating Systems.
Among the critical questions is whether Flight 8501 broke up during flight or hit the water intact.
“It’s important to know because that tells you whether it was a force like a storm that destroyed the airplane in air or if it was a matter of the pilots losing control and never able to recover from it,” said Australia-based aviation security expert Desmond Ross.
One possible advantage for investigators was the relative shallow seabed and its proximity to shipping lanes. That likely means extensive knowledge of currents that could carry the flight recorder, which are waterproof and fitted with an electronic tracking signal.
“My guess is we’ll know what happened within a week,” said David Gallo, an American oceanographer and co-expedition leader of the investigation into the 2009 crash of Air France Flight 447, which went down in the open Atlantic with 228 people aboard and sunk more than 13,000 feet. It took more nearly two years to recover the black box.As night fell Tuesday, it was unclear how many bodies had been spotted by the international flotilla and air reconnaissance teams.
Indonesia’s rescue operations chief, Bambang Soelistyo, said at least six bodies were seen and three were recovered and placed on an Indonesian warship.
A spokesman for the country’s navy, Manahan Simorangkir, said an earlier report that more than 40 bodies were recovered was incorrect and blamed on a “miscommunication” by his staff, the AFP news agency reported.
The lack of extensive body recoveries could mean that many remained in the cabin. In the Air France crash, the largest number of bodies found were still in the submerged fuselage, said Gallo.
Meanwhile, an array of debris was carried to Indonesian ports: A portable oxygen tank, a light blue wheeled suitcase, a portion of the inner layer of the aircraft cabin.
At the Surabaya airport, about 400 miles southeast of Jakarta, relatives of those on the flight broke down in tears as television images showed the recovery a body, bloated by the sun and sea. Some hugged or collapsed in anguish. One man was carried out on a stretcher.
The TV images drew strong condemnation online. The station, TvOne, quickly apologized and subsequently blurred out video of the corpse at sea.
Nearly all the passengers and crew were Indonesians — some making year-end holiday trips to Singapore.
“Words cannot express how sorry I am,” wrote AirAsia’s CEO, Tony Ferdandes, in a tweet.
The debris field was first spotted about six miles from the flight’s last known coordinates.
In a cruel twist, some rescuers believed they saw people waving for help. It turned out to be the sea swells tossing lifeless arms.
“When we approached closer [we saw] they were already dead,” said Lt. Tri Wibowo, co-pilot of an Air Force Hercules C130 involved in the search effort, according to the Indonesian newspaper Kompas.
The spotters on the plane also saw what looked like a shadow on the seabed in the shape of a plane.
Indonesian authorities said Monday they believed the plane was lying at the bottom of the sea, prompting a request to the United States, Britain and France for more advanced equipment.
The USS Sampson, a guided-missile destroyer, joined the search late Tuesday.
In a statement issued late Monday, search officials said they have deployed 12 helicopters, 11 planes and 32 ships, including assets from Malaysia, Singapore and Australia, with more than 1,100 personnel involved. Even fishing boats were tapped in the widespread search.
Until the discoveries Tuesday, the frustrating maritime search was eerily similar to the case of Malaysia Airlines Flight 370, which disappeared over the Indian Ocean in March. The whereabouts of the plane, with 239 people aboard, are still a mystery.
“Reality is so cruel,” said Jiang Hui, a salesman in Beijing whose 70-year-old mother was on the Malaysia Airlines flight. “I feel so much for the families of the AirAsia flight. I have been in their place for the last 10 months.”
A statement from Malaysia Airlines extended “deepest sympathies” to the families of the AirAsia passengers and crew.
For the moment, the last moments of the AirAsia flight offer the only hint of what may have happened.
According to Indonesia’s state-owned navigation provider, AirNav, the pilot asked air traffic control at 6:12 a.m. on Sunday for permission to turn left to avoid bad weather. Permission was granted, the Jakarta Post reported.
The pilot then asked to climb from 32,000 to 38,000 feet, but did not explain why.
Jakarta’s air-traffic control conferred with Singapore-based counterparts and agreed to allow the plane to move to 34,000 feet because a second AirAsia flight, 8502, was flying at 38,000 feet. But by the time air-traffic controllers relayed the permission to climb at 6:14 a.m., there was no reply.
