Searchers recovered bodies from the Java Sea on Tuesday and spotted debris that officials said was likely the wreckage of Indonesia AirAsia Flight 8501 in the first signs of a breakthrough in the three-day, multi-nation hunt for the missing plane.
Indonesian planes involved in the search operation saw “an object that formed a shadow under the sea in the shape of an aircraft,” the head of Indonesia’s National Search and Rescue Agency, Bambang Soelistyo, told a press conference in Jakarta.
He said he was “95% sure” that other debris seen by surveillance aircraft belonged to the Airbus 320-200 that disappeared Sunday morning en route to Singapore from Surabaya, Indonesia, with 162 passengers and crew aboard.
Indonesia’s TV one said that six bodies were spotted and three retrieved by search teams in the waters between the islands of Sumatra and Borneo. The bodies were being taken by the Indonesian military to Banjarmasin, a port on the southern edge of Borneo, news media reported.
Soon after the news broke, AirAsia CEO Tony Fernandes tweeted, “My heart is filled with sadness for all the families involved in QZ 8501. On behalf of AirAsia my condolences to all.”
Fernandes said he was rushing to Surabaya, where most passengers’ families were waiting for news. “Whatever we can do at AirAsia we will be doing,” he said.
Officials at Singapore’s Changi international airport issued a Twitter statement saying, “We are saddened to hear the latest news of QZ8501. We are working closely with AirAsia on travel arrangements for the next-of-kin.”
Earlier, searchers found floating debris in different colors that officials said appeared to be linked to the missing jet.
“Visually, the yellow object could be a life vest and a seat,” Air Force spokesman Hadi Tjahjanto told The Times. “There are also metal pieces that could be pieces from an aircraft.”
Indonesian officials said search planes and a dive team were being sent to the area where “unusual” objects were spotted, about 100 nautical miles southwest off of Pangkalan Bun on Borneo, six miles east of the aircraft’s last known location.
Ships and aircraft from at least five countries have been searching across tens of thousands of square miles of sea and land between Indonesia and Singapore since Sunday.
The first few possible clues to the plane’s disappearance on Monday turned out not to be connected to the flight. A reported oil slick near the Karimata Strait, which connects Indonesia to Singapore, was determined Tuesday morning to be “a group of rocks,” an official said. A weak signal picked up by a surveillance plane from a floating object came from a personal locator beacon, not the jet’s emergency transmitter.
A San Diego-based U.S. naval destroyer, the Sampson, was heading toward the Java Sea and due to arrive later Tuesday to join the search, Pentagon officials said. The destroyer, which was in the midst of a deployment in the western Pacific Ocean, will join more than 30 ships and 15 aircraft from Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore, Australia and South Korea.
Bambang said the search area was expanded Tuesday to include land on the western edge of the island of Borneo and on two smaller islands off Sumatra in the Java Sea – points lying roughly halfway between Surabaya and Singapore.
Special correspondent Pathoni reported from Jakarta, staff writer Bengali from Mumbai, India
