Indonesian
search officials have now confirmed they have located the fuselage of
AirAsia flight 8501 on sonar radar, upside down on the sea floor.
Officials
from Basarnas, Indonesia's search and rescue agency, say the plane
wreckage has been located in 24 to 30 metres of water.
Before
darkness fell in the area, search teams had also identified a shadow
that they believed to be the plane's fuselage. Many of the remaining
victims are thought likely to still be on board the aircraft.
It
comes amid revelations from a pilot involved in the search, that three
people killed on the AirAsia flight were holding hands when their bodies
were spotted floating in the Java sea off Indonesia.
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.’
The
chief of Indonesia's search and rescue agency, Bambang Sulistyo, said
that two males had been recovered, along with one female who was wearing
a flight attendant uniform.
Since
wreckage from the plane was discovered off the coast of Borneo Island,
after three days of searching, there have been a number of different
body counts from several official sources. It's now believed seven
bodies have been recovered.
Divers
and ships will now search the wreckage for the all-important black
boxes of the doomed plane, after officials confirmed that the bodies and
debris found are from flight 8501.
Aviation experts thought the fuselage would be easily found as the aircraft most likely only broke up when it hit the water.
The
Airbus A320-200 was 42 minutes into its flight from Surabaya in
Indonesia to Singapore on Sunday when it vanished with 162 people on
board.
Live Indonesian television news footage showed at least one corpse floating in the water
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