Dozens of bodies are expected to be inside the fuselage of the Airbus A320 jetliner that went down Dec. 28 on a routine flight from Surabaya, Indonesia, to Singapore.
The AirAsia plane carried 162 passengers and crew when it crashed into the Java Sea, presumably because of severe storms, near the island of Borneo.
There were no survivors.
Four bodies were recovered Saturday, bringing the number of victims found to 69, according to Cable News Network (CNN).
Searchers have tried numerous times to raise the fuselage, which was found 10 days ago.
The plane’s tail section was found earlier this month and was lifted from the sea floor using giant balloons, the same techniques being employed now, Indonesia‘s search and rescue chief, Marshall Supriyadi, told CNN.
Indonesia officials said the plane had requested a change in its flight plan shortly before it disappeared from radar, and believe the Airbus 320 tried to accelerate rapidly but stalled.
Nurcahyo Utomo, an investigator with Indonesia’s National Transportation Safety Committee, told CNN that his analysis of the plane’s voice and data recorders was 90 percent complete.
Utomo said he had listened to the final conversations of the pilot and co-pilot on board the aircraft and had reviewed the plane’s flight data, including speed and altitude measurements.
Investigators expect the voice and data recorders to enable them to understand why Flight 8501 crashed to minimize the possibility of similar occurrences in the future.
