AirAsia flight found upside down at the bottom of the sea, passengers found holding hands

Indonesian search officials have now confirmed they have located the fuselage of AirAsia flight 8501 on sonar radar, upside down on the sea floor, not far from where three of the bodies from the doomed AirAsia flight were found holding hands when discovered floating in the Java Sea. Officials from Basarnas, Indonesia's search and rescue agency, say the plane wreckage has been located in 24 to 30 metres of water and one of the seven confirmed recovered bodies was wearing a life jacket. 

The bodies of passengers on board doomed AirAsia flight 8501 may wash up on Borneo beaches as stormy weather scatters wreckage and suspends search and rescue operations.

Seven bodies have been recovered from the Java Sea in the 24 hours since wreckage was first spotted 100 miles off the Indonesian coast but fierce winds and strong currents have already dispersed floating wreckage more than 30 miles from the crash site.

Helicopter missions to collect bodies and debris were suspended for much of the day as heavy rain reduced visibility to less than half a mile, with experts warning that the longer the recovery efforts take, the further the bodies will scatter - increasing the likelihood of corpses washing ashore. 

The news comes as an Indonesian official who earlier claimed at least one of the recovered bodies was wearing a lifejacket, backtracked to say that in fact none of the victims were wearing one.

Deputy Operations Major-General Tatang Basarnas Zaenuddin's earlier statement led many to believe passengers on board doomed AirAsia flight 8501 would have been aware that the plane was going crash, and raised the possibility some may even have survived the initial impact.

Lieutenant Airman Tri Wobowo, who was co-piloting Indonesia's C130 Herclues aircraft, was the first to discover debris from the plane and witnessed the tragic scene. 

'There were seven to eight people. Three of them held hands,' he told a local newspaper. 

A plane door, a blue suitcase, oxygen tank and the remnants of an emergency slide were among the objects found about 10km from where the plane was last detected on radar. But the most harrowing discoveries were the corpses floating in the Java Sea - about 100 miles off the coast - and search chiefs fully expect none of the 162 passengers and crew on board made it out of the wreckage alive.

Family members who have been at the airport since the crash happened on Sunday December 28th, are expected to come forward to identify the remains of their loved ones.

Source: UK Daily Mail