AirAsia Flight 8501: Search Officially Ends, CEO Insists It Cannot ‘Go On Indefinitely’

Indonesia’s rescue agency confirmed the search for bodies from AirAsia flight 8501 will end Tuesday night. Officials report the ships will pull-out from the search zone on Wednesday, despite many people still unaccounted for. The CEO of AirAsia insists the search cannot “go on indefinitely.”

According to BBC News, there were 162 people on the plane. Rescue workers have recovered 106 bodies and 56 people remain missing.

AirAsia CEO Tony Fernandes told reporters that he is more than satisfied.

“We have been successful… To get more than 50 [percent] is considered a huge success.”

Any possibility for lone survivors in remote islands?

MSN reports that all people on board the AirAsia flight were killed when the plane crashed into the Java Sea. The search has been solely to recover bodies and wreckage from the downed plane.

The families will have to accept the end of the search, but for Frangky Chandra, whose older brother is still unaccounted for, it’s difficult to let go completely.

According to Chandra, he and his family, “will never stop waiting.”

Most of the bodies have been found in or around the wreckage site, although some have been discovered up to 1,000 kilometers away. The most recent find the from the AirAsia flight was three bodies on March 14.

Rescue workers also discovered the plane’s two black boxes, which contained an audio recording of the cockpit.

As previously reported by the Inquisitr, the black box revealed the less-experienced co-pilot had taken control of the plane during those last fatal minutes.

Officials were not able to get much more information from the boxes. MSN reports that air traffic controls first lost contact with AirAsia flight 8501 on December 28 last year. Radar data showed the aircraft was climbing rapidly to avoid a storm, which may have caused it to stall and fall out of the sky.

On January 3, rescue workers found the plane’s wreckage on the bottom of the ocean. And the two black boxes, one for the flight data recorder and another for the cockpit voice recorder, were found on January 13.

The incident came on the heels of Malaysia Airlines two deadly accidents.

The first came in March, 2014, when Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 disappeared. Subsequent search and rescue efforts have never revealed the final resting place for the plane or its 251 passengers and crew.

Then, a few months later in July, Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 was shot down while traveling over the troubled Eastern Ukraine region. That search was impeded by the fighting there.

Needless to say, it has been a terrible year for air travel in Southeast Asia. Still, Time Magazine reports that air safety actually improved a great deal globally in 2014, despite AirAsia’s failed flight 8501 and the Malaysian Airlines incidents.

[Image Credit: Getty Images]