Bad weather prevented divers from closely examining possible wreckage of AirAsia Flight 8501 in the Java Sea Sunday, as a group of Indonesian meteorological experts claimed that an engine problem related to icing was the most likely weather-related factor that may have caused the crash.
Despite a massive international search and recovery operation, so far only 31 bodies have been found, due in large part to bad weather. Officials believe many of the remaining 131 passengers and crew are strapped to their seats inside the plane, which crashed Dec. 28 at roughly the halfway point of its flight from Surabaya, Indonesia to Singapore.
On Saturday, officials said they were confident that they had located the wreckage after sonar equipment detected five large objects on the ocean floor. The biggest piece of debris, measuring 59 feet long and 18 feet wide, appeared to be part of the jet's body, said Henry Bambang Soelistyo, chief of the National Search and Rescue Agency. Four other chunks were found in the same area, and suspected plane parts also were seen scattered on beaches during an aerial survey.
Divers waited for breaks in weather Sunday to reach the site, but rolling seas stirred up silt and mud, leaving them with zero visibility, said Soelistyo.
Two divers who successfully reached the suspected wreck site of AirAsia flight 8501 didn't get to stay because conditions were so bad.
"At this moment, it's impossible to send any divers," Soelistyo said. "We'll wait until the weather gets better."
Twenty planes and helicopters were being deployed Sunday together with 27 ships from Indonesia, Japan, Malaysia, Singapore, the United States searching for the all-important black boxes and pieces of wreckage.
It is not clear what caused the single-aisle Airbus A320 to plummet into the Java Sea 42 minutes after taking off from Surabaya, Indonesia's second-largest city, last Sunday. Minutes before losing contact, the pilot told air traffic control he was approaching threatening clouds, but was denied permission to climb to a higher altitude because of heavy air traffic.
On Friday, the Wall Street Journal reported that Indonesia's weather agency issued a 14-page report described as a "meteorological analysis" of the accident. The report described how ice on the engine could have caused significant damage, but stopped short of naming it as the single cause of the tragedy.
Many air-safety experts have posited that unreliable airspeed sensors stemming from ice accumulation—or other flight-control difficulties— may have touched off a chain of events ending with the plane crashing. However, ice-related engine damage or malfunctions have not brought down a jetliner in over 30 years.
Other observers said the report added little to the conversation about what caused Flight 8501 to go down.
"You can’t jump to conclusions based only on the weather reports," Greg Waldron, the Asia managing editor of aviation industry publication Flightglobal, told the Journal. Waldron added that the key to solving the mystery lay with searchers finding the cockpit voice and data recorders.
Meanwhile, back in Surabaya, more than a thousand worshippers attended somber Sunday services at Pentecostal Mawar Sharon Church, whose members made up more than a quarter of the 162 people on board the plane.
"God, we pray that you will give the grieving families extraordinary strength and help ease their pain," said the Rev. Johannes Sonny Susanto. "Let them put their trust in you and know that you are a good God."
Other family members attended a small, intimate chapel service at the police headquarters where a crisis center is based, some sobbing so hard they had to be consoled by church counselors who hugged and prayed for them.
Rev. Philip Mantofa locked eyes with an Indonesian man who lost a child and was sitting in the first row.
"If God has called your child, allow me to say this: your child is not to be pitied," he said. "Your child is already in God's arms. One day, your family will be reunited in heaven."
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