The Head of the Indonesian National Search and Rescue Agency speaks to journalists about the missing AirAasia plane. (Adi Weda/EPA)
The statement came after wreckage was spotted following an intensive search.
Lt. Tri Wibowo, co-pilot of an Air Force Hercules C130 involved in the search effort, said his team had seen dozens of floating bodies and a lot of aircraft debris off the coast of Borneo.
“We thought that the passengers were still alive and waved at us for help. But when we approached closer [we saw] they were already dead,” Tri said, according to the Indonesian newspaper Kompas.
The plane, with 162 people on board, disappeared Sunday on its way from Surabaya, Indonesia to Singapore after encountering storm clouds.
Local Indonesian media reported that an Indonesian warship involved in the search had retrieved 40 bodies.
Earlier, Indonesian officials said at a press conference they had recovered three of the bodies, which were found in the Java Sea about 6 miles from Flight 8501’s last communication with air-traffic control.
The three recovered bodies, swollen but intact, were brought to an Indonesian navy ship, National Search and Rescue Director SB Supriyadi told reporters in the nearest town. The corpses did not have life jackets on.
Images on Indonesian television station TvOne showed a half-naked bloated body bobbing in the sea. Search and rescue teams were lowered on ropes from a hovering helicopter to retrieve the corpses.
Relatives of the passengers sat together in a waiting room at the Surabaya airport watching the graphic details on television. Many screamed and wailed uncontrollably in grief. One middle-aged man collapsed and was rushed from the room on a stretcher.
The footage drew strong condemnation online. TvOne quickly apologized and subsequently blurred out the white shape when reshowing the footage.
Search and rescue chief Bambang Sulistyo said at a press conference that at an Indonesian air force Hercules found a shadow underwater that appears to be in the shape of a plane. If so, the wreckage may be in shallow enough waters that it can be reached by divers.
AirAsia Chief Executive Tony Fernandes responded via Twitter that he was rushing to Surabaya.
“Whatever we can do at Airasia we will be doing,” he said. “My heart is filled with sadness for all the families involved in QZ 8501. On behalf of AirAsia my condolences.”
The massive three-day search effort brought several false alarms. But Tuesday’s finds confirmed the worst.
“The debris is red and white,” Djoko Murjatmodjo, acting director general of air transportation at the transportation ministry, told reporters. “We are checking if it’s debris from the aircraft. It’s probably from the body of the aircraft.”
An AFP photographer aboard one of the search aircraft that spotted the debris, took several photos of the floating objects, which Indonesian officials described as resembling an emergency slide, plane door and other objects.
Indonesian authorities said Monday they believed the plane was lying at the bottom of the sea, complicating the search and prompting them to ask the United States, Britain and France for more advanced equipment.
The Pentagon said that details of that assistance are being worked out but that it would probably include “air, surface and sub-surface detection capabilities.”
An Indonesian helicopter crew Monday afternoon spotted two oily patches. But search officials said at the time it was too soon to tell whether they were related to the Singapore-bound aircraft, whose last contact with air-traffic controllers Sunday after a request by the pilot to climb to 38,000 feet after encountering rough weather.
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 have been tapped in the widespread search for the wreckage, authorities said.
The U.S. Navy said the USS Sampson, a guided-missile destroyer that is already in the region, would join the search later Tuesday.
The sister of the French co-pilot of the plane, Remi Plesel, told a radio station, “We want them to find the plane, to explain to us what happened.” But Renee Plesel said she realized that “when a plane falls out of the sky, there are hardly any survivors.”
The sudden disappearance and frustrating maritime search were eerily similar to those in 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.
Indonesia’s state-owned navigation provider, AirNav, gave local media a detailed account Monday of Flight 8501’s last contact with air-traffic controllers Sunday.
Wisnu Darjono, AirNav’s safety director, said the pilot asked Soekarno-Hatta Airport’s air-traffic control at 6:12 a.m. for permission to turn left to avoid bad weather. Permission was granted, and the plane turned seven miles to its left flank, 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 increase its altitude 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, Darjono said.
Shares of AirAsia dropped sharply in trading Monday.
Experts said the plane’s disappearance has raised several tantalizing questions.
Bad weather appeared to play a role, but it is unclear why the pilot was not able to avoid it earlier, Ross said, noting that modern commercial jets are equipped with radar that can spot bad weather more than 100 miles ahead.
The speed of the airplane is likely to be at the forefront of any investigation, said John Cox, a former accident investigator. Radar suggests that the plane was flying at a low speed, Cox said. Overly slow speed at a high altitude could cause an airplane to stall, with insufficient lift to sustain flight, he said.
Geoffrey Thomas, editor of AirlineRatings.com, said he reviewed radar data of the flight obtained by other A320 pilots showing the plane at an altitude of 36,300 feet and climbing and traveling at 353 knots, or roughly 406 miles per hour — relatively slow for that altitude.
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