AirAsia fuselage found in Java Sea
Singapore's Defense Minister Ng Eng Hen said in a statement on Facebook that the country's navy chief told him the plane's fuselage was located by one of the nation's vessels.
Bambang Soelistyo, Indonesia's National Search and Rescue chief, said the section found is 100 feet long and 30 feet wide with a height of 10 feet.
"The fuselage with a wing still attached on it was found in the priority search area and has been confirmed as part of AirAsia plane," he said.
Ng said images taken by a remotely operated vehicle show part of the aircraft's wing and words on the fuselage. Indonesian President Joko Widodo expressed happiness at the discovery, saying divers would examine the fuselage Thursday.
"The accident is a tragic event resulting in the loss of many lives," Ng said. "I hope that with the fuselage located, some form of closure can come to the families of the victims to ease their grief."On Tuesday, Soelistyo told victims' families that the search operations for the plane would soon be scaled back but that the effort to recover the bodies of those aboard would continue.
That announcement came the same day divers retrieved the flight's cockpit voice recorder from the seafloor. The other black box — the data recorder — was previously brought to the surface, and both have been sent to Jakarta for study.
Authorities hope the black boxes will help determine why the Singapore-bound jet plummeted into the Java Sea less than an hour out of Surabaya, Indonesia, amid heavy storms on Dec. 28. All 162 passengers and crew are presumed dead.
On Saturday, the tail of the plane was lifted from the seafloor and taken to Pangkalan Bun, the nearest town, to be handed over to Indonesia's National Transportation Safety Committee for investigation. Soelistyo said the fuselage was located 1.8 miles from the tail, at a depth of about 92 feet.
Also Wednesday, fishermen found two bodies along with plane seats and debris off the coast off South Kalimantan, bringing to 50 the total of bodies recovered so far.
The Indonesian Transport Ministry has said AirAsia did not have a license to fly the route on the day of the crash, a claim AirAsia Indonesia had vigorously disputed. In testimony this week before the Indonesian parliament, however, airline president Sunu Widyatmoko acknowledged that due to an "administrative mistake" the airline had only verbally proposed a schedule change to allow Sunday flights.
The airline has been banned from flying the Surabaya-Singapore route. The Transport Ministry has suspended scores of routes from other domestic airlines for similar alleged violations.