AirAsia Wreck Located

Searchers are waiting for calmer seas to send divers down to what is believed to be the wreckage of AirAsia Flight 5801 in the Java Sea off Borneo. Sonar scans have located five large objects, including one 60 feet long by 18 feet across, that authorities believe is the fuselage of the A320 that went down eight days ago. The wreck is in about 100 feet of water and would normally be easily accessible but the surface has been too rough to deploy divers. Most of the bodies of the passengers and crew are expected to still be inside the fuselage. So far 34 bodies have been recovered. The flight data and cockpit voice recorders are likely still on the aircraft, too.

Meanwhile the various agencies investigating the crash have indulged in some scapegoating as they wait for hard evidence of the cause of the crash. Local media made much out of the fact that AirAsia was allegedly breaching an agreement with Indonesia to not fly that route on Sundays although there has been no discussion of the relevance of that revelation to the investigation. There have also been reports that the airline had not obtained the latest official weather before the flight launched, although there are numerous other sources of real-time weather available.