The Disaster Victim Identification (DVI) team from the East Java Police is still working to identify a body presumed to be the pilot or co-pilot of AirAsia flight QZ8501, which crashed on Dec. 28, 2014.
Leader of the DVI team Sr. Com. Budiyono said on Monday that the presumption was based on the AirAsia uniform that was attached to the remains when they were sent to the Bhayangkara Hospital in Surabaya on Sunday, together with six other sets of remains found by the recovery team.
“One of the bodies was in an AirAsia uniform with three stripes on the epaulettes, but we still cannot be certain what this indicates,” said Budiyono as quoted by Antara.
He said the DVI team needed more than one piece of secondary data to positively identify a body. “We need to check primary data like DNA, dental records or finger prints,” he said.
Member of AirAsia’s safety and security staff Dono Sukoco said the rank signifier was associated with the co-pilot, First Officer Remi Emmanuel Plesel.
East Java Police have so far identified 73 bodies recovered from the plane that crashed into the Java Sea with the loss of all 155 passengers and seven crew.
The search and recovery efforts continued to be carried out in the Karimata Strait and the Java Sea to find more bodies, as well as in the waters off Sulawesi Island.
The Basarnas in Makassar, South Sulawesi, has expanded its search area to a number of locations in Central and West Sulawesi.
“We are focusing on seven locations to look for bodies and debris, expanding the search up to Central and West Sulawesi,” the search agency local chapter head Deden Ridwansyah said Saturday.
According to Deden, the seven locations were in the waters off Palu city in Central Sulawesi, by the Topoyo, Mamuju, Majene and Polewali Mandar regencies in West Sulawesi and off the Pinrang and Barru regencies in South Sulawesi
“We are also receiving help from local fishermen, local disaster mitigation agency officers and the police for combing the coastal areas of the locations,” he said.
Deden said the search, which has lasted for more than a month, would continue for an indefinite period.
“We have yet to receive orders to stop the search. We don’t know for sure when the search would end,” he said.
A total of eight bodies, suspected to be those of the AirAsia victims, had been found in Sulawesi waters, located around 1,000 kilometers from the crash site. Six of the bodies were found in Majene and two in Pinrang.
Earlier on Saturday, three bodies were found at the bottom of the Java Sea. Basarnas confirmed that one of four bodies found on Friday was those of a pilot after a team of divers located the cockpit of the crashed plane.
Tuesday 10 February 2015
http://www.thejakartapost.com/news/2015/02/10/national-scene-dvi-still-working-identifying-airasia-pilot.html
http://www.thejakartapost.com/news/2015/02/09/airasia-plane-victims-search-identification-continue.html
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