SURABAYA, Indonesia — More ships arrived Friday with sensitive equipment to hunt for the fuselage of AirAsia Flight 8501 and the more than 145 people still missing since it crashed into the sea five days ago.
Indonesia’s Search and Rescue Agency chief Henry Bambang Soelistyo said efforts would be stepped up as long as the weather allowed.
“We will focus on underwater detection,” he said, adding ships from Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore and the U.S. had been on the scene since before dawn Friday to try to pinpoint wreckage and the all-important black boxes– the flight data and cockpit voice recorders.
The Airbus A320 crashed into the Java Sea on Sunday with 162 people on board. Sixteen bodies have been recovered so far. Seven were announced Friday morning, six of which were found by a U.S. Navy ship, said Suryadi B. Supriyadi, operation coordinator for the National Search and Rescue Agency.
Nine planes, many with metal detecting equipment, were also scouring a 13,500 square kilometer (8,380 square mile) area off Pangkalan Bun, the closest town on Borneo island to the search area. Two Japanese ships with three helicopters were on their way to the area, Soelistyo said.