Indonesian divers have reportedly recovered the remains of the French co-pilot still buckled to his seat and one hundered other bodies from the crashed AirAsia plane on sea floor, an official has confirmed.
Coordinator of the search and rescue effort S.B. Supriyadi confirmed that the body must be of co-pilot Remi Plesel who was found at the front part of the fuselage during the operation on Friday.
"It is likely the body of the French co-pilot, wearing uniform with three stripes on shoulder," he told AFP. He added that Plesel's body remains onboard the Pacitan warship.
Supriyadi also said that divers found 3 more bodies inside the plane Friday and another 3 bodies near the fuselage bringing the number of dead recovered to 101.
According to CNN, the police said that 72 out of the 101 bodies retrieved from the site have already been identified and that they're making attempts to also recognize the other victims.
AirAsia Flight 8501 with 162 people on board took off from Surabaya city in Indonesia and bound to Singapore went down in stormy weather and into the Java sea on December 28.
Last month, it's been revealed by the crash investigators that French co-pilot was maneuvering the plane before the incident happened rather than experienced ex-fighter plane pilot Captain Irivanto who just monitored the flight.
Two people close to the investigation team reported that Captain Irivanto had left his seat to disconnect the faulty Flight Augmentation Computer entrusting his co-pilot to take control of the plane when the accident happened.
The crash investigating team believed that the computer had malfunctioned and instead of just resetting, the pilot opted to disconnect the device from the circuit breaker found behind the co-pilot.
USA Today wrote that some of the bodies were retrieved off Sulawesi Island estimatedy 1,000km or 620 miles east of the crash site.
To date, there are 60 divers who volunteer to take part of the search and rescue operations that only resumed January 31 after failing to lift the fuselage from the seabed for several times.
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