AirAsia Recovery Update: First Attempt At Lifting Fuselage From Java Sea Fails

Authorities are working to lift the fuselage of AirAsia flight 8501 from the Java Sea, but their first attempt has failed. According to AOL News, the Airbus A320 was lifted using balloons, but as the body of the plane reached the water’s surface, the balloons deflated, and it fell back to the bottom of the ocean. It is believed that the majority of passengers on the aircraft are still buckled into their seats, wherefore it has been decided that the easiest way to recover the bodies is to lift the plane out of the water.

“Divers reached the fuselage section for the first time on Friday and retrieved six bodies. A total of 69 bodies have now been recovered from AirAsia Flight 8501, which crashed Dec. 28 with 162 people on board while flying from Surabaya, Indonesia’s second largest city, to Singapore,” reports AOL News.

The crash of AirAsia flight 8501 is still being investigated. Authorities have recovered the black boxes from the aircraft, and the data is being analyzed. As of now, it is presumed that severe weather caused the plane trouble as it flew through a nasty thunderstorm. According to Yahoo! News, sources have said that the situation in the cockpit was “chaotic” before the unthinkable happened.

“There were so many alarms captured by the voice recorder that the jet was in essence screaming at the pilots,” said a source.

Indonesian officials say that the aircraft climbed at a rate three times beyond it’s capabilities, more than likely causing both engines to stall. And while the Airbus A320 is designed to fly without engines, the plane fell victim to the skies.

As previously reported by the Inquisitr, sources say that the AirAsia crash is reminiscent of the Air France crash back in 2009.

“Air France flight 447 vanished en route from Rio to Paris at night during a storm. The Airbus A330’s speed sensors were found to have malfunctioned, and the plane climbed too steeply, causing it to stall.”

Authorities working on the recovery mission for AirAsia flight 8501 will make another attempt to lift the fuselage in the coming days. More balloons will be added to help bring the plane out of the water. Families are hopeful that this attempt will be successful, and that they may receive the bodies of their family members so that they can begin the respective burial processes.

[Photo courtesy of Aero Icarus from Zürich, Switzerland, via Wikimedia Commons]