Head of the Indonesian National Search and Rescue (Basarnas), Henry Bambang Soelistyo, said the Basarnas detected two large objects in the sea last night, thought to belong to the AirAsia flight QZ8501 that went missing on December 28, 2014.
“Because of the oil slick above the two large objects, I can confirm that they are part of the AirAsia plane we’ve been searching for,” Soelistyo said today, as quoted by Tempo.
He added that Basarnas vessels detected the objects at 23:40 WIB (Western Indonesia Time) last night.
Through sonar technology, Basarnas calculated that one of the objects measured 9.2m x 4.6m x 0.5m, whereas the other object is 7.2m x 0.5m.
“They are close to each other, in a depth of 30 meters,” Soelistyo said.
An Indonesian and a Singaporean ship were deployed to the location to take clearer images of the two objects, but were unable to do so due to strong water currents and large waves.
It is not yet known when the two objects will be extracted from under the sea.
Search and rescue finds two large objects, thought to belong to AirAsia QZ8501
Jan 3, 2015 | 1:30pm Jakarta time
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