Weather hampers recovery of plane's tail
LIVE QZ8501 DAY 12 AirAsia's Surabaya-Singapore flight carrying 155 passengers and seven crew members on board crashed into the sea off Kalimantan on the morning of Dec 28, after taking off from Surabaya in Java, Indonesia, at 5.20am local time. No one is believed to have survived.
A multinational search and rescue (SAR) operations continue to scour the crash area off the southwest tip of Kalimantan for wreckage and bodies. So far, 40 bodies and the tail of the plane have been found.
Malaysiakini brings you the live updates of information as it comes in.
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5.15pm: Two more bodies have been spotted in the water but due to conditions at sea, the SAR has yet to bring the bodies onboard, reports Channel NewsAsia .
2.30pm: The search has been aborted for now due to non conducive weather at the search site, reports The Jakarta Globe .
1.30pm: Another body was recovered today, says the Malaysian navy chief Abdul Aziz Jaafar.
10am: The equipment being used for SAR purposes at sea also has its limitations and one has to be careful when lifting the tail out of sea, says the Indonesian army chief Moeldoko, reports detik.com .
Moeldoko, who is supervising the recovery of the wreckage says that the equipment can only lift up to 10 tonnes.
"We hope the tail will not be more than that," says Moeldoko, reports detik.com .
8.30am: The Malaysian navy chief Abdul Aziz Jaafar tweets that the main focus is getting the wreckage of the tail of the ill-fated plane out of the seabed.
As of yesterday, 40 bodies have been found.
detik.com reports the SAR team says the 40th body is relatively in better condition than the earlier ones, which have started the process of skeletonisation after days in the sea.
The SAR team is racing against time to get all the remaining bodies out, as any left in the sea will eventually be stripped of flesh and skin leaving forensics with only teeth and hair for identification.


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