Passengers on Flight 8501 knew they were going to their doom: Search pilots reveal victims had time to put on life-jackets before jet crashed – and two were found holding hands in the Java Sea
*Seventh body pulled from water at crash site was wearing a life-jacket
*Pilot assisting search added that three victims were found holding hands
*Details indicate passengers knew plane was about to crash and suggests some may have been alive after impact
*Two coffins arrived at Juanda Airport for identification earlier today
*Family members have been stationed there since the plane vanished from radars just 42 minutes after departing the airport on Sunday
*Next of kin have been asked for DNA samples to help identify the victims
*More victims are expected to arrive at the airport as the day progresses
*But search for further bodies is being hampered by stormy weather
Strong winds and currents moved floating wreckage 30 miles overnight
Passengers on board doomed AirAsia flight 8501 would have have been aware that the plane was going crash, it has emerged, after search pilots revealed victims had time to put on life jackets.
Representatives from Basarnas, Indonesia’s search and rescue agency, said a seventh body recovered from the Java Sea this morning was wearing a life jacket, while a pilot assisting the operation claimed three of the victims were found floating in the water still holding hands.
Some of the recovered bodies were fully clothed, which could indicate the Airbus A320-200 was intact when it hit the water – supporting the theory that the plane did not explode or break up in mid-air and may instead have suffered an aerodynamic stall.
The fact that one person put on a life jacket suggests those on board had time before the aircraft hit the water, or before it sank.
This would make the search pilot’s claim that three of the victims were found still holding hands more feasible, as it suggests not all passengers died on impact, although it raises questions over why the AirAsia captain did not raise a distress signal before the crash.
Ships and planes have been scouring the Java Sea for flight QZ8501 since Sunday, when the AirAsia plane lost contact during bad weather 42 minutes into its flight from the Indonesian city of Surabaya to Singapore.
Despite suggestions passengers may have been alive during the plane’s final few moments in the air, the the pilots did not issue a distress signal in the time between asking permission to fly higher to avoid bad weather and six minutes later when air traffic control lost contact with the plane.
‘This morning, we recovered a total of four bodies and one of them was wearing a life jacket,’ said Tatang Zaenudin, an official with the search and rescue agency.
He declined to speculate on what the find might mean.
Earlier Lieutenant Airman Tri Wobowo, who co-piloted the C130 Hercules aircraft that first saw debris of the plane on Tuesday, told Indonesian newspaper Kompas: ‘There are seven to eight people. Three [of them] again hold hands.’
A pilot who works for a Gulf carrier said the life jacket indicated the cause of the crash was not ‘catastrophic failure’. Instead, the plane could have stalled and then come down, possibly because its instruments iced up and gave the pilots inaccurate readings.
‘There was time. It means the thing didn’t just fall out of the sky,’ said the pilot, who declined to be identified.
He said it could take a minute for a plane to come down from 30,000 feet and the pilots could have experienced ‘tunnel vision … too overloaded’ to send a distress call.
‘The first train of thought when you get into a situation like that is to fly the aircraft.’