File Photo: AirAsia plane QZ8501 went down in stormy weather on December 28 in the Java Sea. (Agence France-Presse)
Indonesia has retrieved the final major part of the fuselage of an AirAsia jet that crashed into the Java Sea in December, killing all 162 people on board, officials said today.
The mangled wreckage, the largest part of the plane retrieved, was pulled from the sea on Friday and loaded onto a ship, national search and rescue chief Bambang Soelistyo told AFP.
"We have retrieved on Friday the last and large part of the AirAsia fuselage with a wing still intact," Soelistyo told AFP.
No bodies were found during the course of the operation.
Soelistyo said in a press conference today that authorities will decide on a final date for the salvage operation after a meeting with the victims' families scheduled for next week.
Some 103 bodies have been recovered since the plane went down in stormy weather while flying from the Indonesian city of Surabaya to Singapore, search and rescue coordinator S.B. Supriyadi told AFP.