AirAsia Flight QZ8501: Indonesia retrieves last of jet fuselage

This article is more than 12 months old

Feb 28, 2015 05:25 pm

Indonesia has retrieved the final major part of the fuselage of the AirAsia jet that crashed into the Java Sea in December, killing all 162 people on board, officials said today (Feb 28).

The mangled wreckage, the largest part of the plane retrieved, was pulled from the sea on Friday and loaded onto a ship, national search and rescue chief Bambang Soelistyo told AFP.

"We have retrieved on Friday the last and large part of the AirAsia fuselage with a wing still intact," Mr Soelistyo told the wire agency.

No bodies were found during the course of the operation.

He said at a press conference today that authorities will decide on a final date for the salvage operation after a meeting with the victims’ families scheduled for next week.

To date, 103 bodies have been recovered since QZ8501 went down in stormy weather while flying from the Indonesian city of Surabaya to Singapore, search and rescue coordinator S.B. Supriyadi told AFP.