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Rescuers on Sunday recovered another body and a fifth large object belonging to the doomed AirAsia jet in the JavaSea as they continued to scour the choppy waters for the eighth day.
The development comes a day after four large metal objects were located on the seabed amid reports that the plane carrying 162 people on board was flying on an unauthorised schedule when it crashed.
AirAsia Flight QZ8501 en route from Indonesia’s Surabaya city to Singapore mysteriously crashed last Sunday and relief workers are hunting for black box recorders to determine the cause of the crash.
The body was spotted by personnel on RSS Persistence at 7.58 am and recovered on board the ship at 8.46 am, Singapore’s Ministry of Defence said in a statement.
This takes the total number of bodies retrieved from the JavaSea so far to 31.
The body was found within the Republic of Singapore Navy’s designated search area in the JavaSea, it said.
It is not clear yet whether the victim was a male or female, the Channel News Asia reported. The Indonesian authorities have been informed and the body will be flown to Pangkalan Bun.
Meanwhile, Indonesia’s national search and rescue agency said a fifth large object was discovered underwater on Sunday morning. It measured about 9.8 x 1.1 x 0.4 metres.
At a news conference, officials also said dives have been temporarily suspended due to bad weather, and a remotely operated underwater vehicle has been sent to the search site. There are 17 Russian divers with unmanned submersibles at the search area too.
There were 20 aircraft and 27 ships deployed on Sunday combing the waters for the victims and wreckage of the Airbus 320-200 aircraft, the agency added.
Officials believe many of the remaining 131 passengers and crew are strapped to their seats and efforts have focused on locating the fuselage of the ill-fated plane.
According to a report on the website of Indonesia’s meteorological agency, weather was the “triggering factor” in the crash.
“Based on the available data received on the location of the aircraft’s last contact, the weather was the triggering factor behind the accident.
“The most probable weather phenomenon was icing which can cause engine damage due to a cooling process. This is just one of the possibilities that occurred based on the analysis of existing meteorological data,” it said.
Two objects were found at the bottom of the sea near Pangkalan Bun on Saturday. One of them was measured at 9.4 metres by 4.8 metres and a half-metre high. The other, found nearby, was 7.2 metres by a half metre.
Investigators are focusing on autopsies of recovered bodies to ascertain what happened to the plane. Though some of the victims’ families did not approve of autopsies, media reports said.
The AirAsia plane was not permitted to fly the Surabaya-Singapore route on Sundays.
The Indonesian authorities said AirAsia had violated the terms of its licence for the Surabaya to Singapore route by flying on a Sunday, the day the aircraft plunged into the JavaSea. The authorities would probe the carrier’s other schedules.
Singapore said it had approved the Surabaya- Singapore route for AirAsia flights on Sundays after the low-cost carrier’s permit was frozen by Indonesia.