Search for bodies officially ends

onnaedo

March 17, 2015 4:21 PM

The head of Indonesia's rescue agency, Bambang Soelistyo said the ships involved in the search will be pulled out on Wednesday.

The search for the remaining bodies on the fatal AirAsia 8501 has officially ended, BBC reports.

The head of Indonesia's rescue agency, Bambang Soelistyo said the ships involved in the search will be pulled out on Wednesday.

AirAsia lost contact with flight QZ 8501 on December 28th as it was flying from Surabaya in Indonesia to Singapore with 162 people on board.

The search effort has recovered 106 bodies while 56 remain unaccounted for.

Understandably, some of the families of those missing are unhappy that the search is now coming to an end even as Frangky Chandra, the older brother of Gani Chandra, an Indonesian man who was on board the plane, and whose body has not been found, said relatives wanted to continue with their own investigation.

Meanwhile, Tony Fernandes, the CEO of AirAsia, told reporters last week that he was satisfied with the search operation describing the operation as successful.

"We have been successful... To get more than 50% is considered a huge success," he said.

The fuselage and blackbox of the crashed plane had been found earlier on and it revealed several alarms were "screaming", drowning out the sound of the pilots' voices.

Also the bodies that were recovered were mostly found in and around the wreckage, with a few discovered some 1,000km away, off the Indonesian island of Sulawesi.

The plane is thought to have been attempting to fly above a storm and the pilot's last contact was a request to divert around bad weather.

Investigations also revealed that the less experienced co-pilot was at the controls at the time.

onnaedo