On live TV. . . how jet crash families learned loved ones were dead
THEY had prayed for a miracle, but their hopes were dashed in the cruellest of ways yesterday.
Families of those on the doomed AirAsia flight 8501 learned the fate of their loved ones when a body was seen floating in the sea during a live TV news broadcast.
It was the first of six bodies to be found and caused scenes of overwhelming grief.
Relatives watching from a private room at Indonesia’s Surabaya Juanda International airport collapsed screaming. Two were carried away on stretchers and taken to hospital suffering from severe shock.
The brutal footage ended all hopes of finding survivors from the 162 on board.
The naked body was filmed floating near pieces of the smashed aircraft in the Java Sea south of Borneo.
Indonesia’s TV One network was forced to apologise for broadcasting the live rolling news footage.
By then it was too late. An AirAsia female staff member screamed at TV reporters, accusing them of showing no respect to relatives by allowing it to be broadcast.
AirAsia officials and search and rescue officers admitted privately that the wreckage, bearing the red and white colours of the airline, owned by Queens Park Rangers chief Tony Fernandes, left no hope of finding any survivors.
At a press conference Mr Fernandes said: ‘I am absolutely devastated. This is a scar with me for the rest of my life.’
He said the pilot of the illfated plane was very experi- enced with 20,000 hours of flying time behind him.
Despite a massive air and sea search, scouring the Java Sea, it has taken more than two days for 30 aircraft to spot the wreckage, some six miles from the site of the last radar contact with the Airbus as it flew to Singapore.
A shadowy outline of the plane has been seen lying in 90ft of water. Among the dead is British energy executive Chiman Choi, who has a Singaporean wife and two children. His wife and young son had left Surabaya for Singapore on an earlier flight.
He boarded the later flight with his two-year-old daughter Zoe. A relative of Mr Choi, whose family lives in Cheshire, is to fly to Singapore shortly.