DVI Identifies Body Believed to be of AirAsia Pilot

Surabaya, E Java (Antara) - The Disaster Victim Identification (DVI) team of the East Java Provincial Police is in the process of identifying a body believed to be that of the pilot or co-pilot of crashed AirAsia flight QZ8501. The body still wore the AirAsia uniform for pilots when it was taken to the Bhayangkara police hospital on Sunday, chief of the DVI team Snr. Commr. Budiyono said here on Monday. Earlier, the hospital received another seven bodies of the victims of AirAsia flight QZ8501 from the SAR team. One of them still wore the AirAsia uniform. "True. One of the bodies wore the AirAsia uniform. But, our team is still examining it carefully. There are three stripes on his uniform and we have yet to ascertain what they mean," he added. To identify a body, the team needs more than one piece of secondary evidence; so, uniform alone is not enough because the result of identification must be accounted for legally and scientifically, he pointed out. "Uniform alone is not enough. We must use primary data such as DNA, teeth or fingerprints," he remarked. Seeing the stripes on the uniform, member of AirAsia Safety and Security Section Dono Sukoco did not deny the preliminary assumption that the body belonged to co-pilot Remi Emanuel Plesel. However, he noted, extra data will be needed to confirm that the body is of the co-pilot. The AirAsia Airbus A320-200 carrying 162 people had gone missing on the morning of December 28 after losing contact with air traffic control on its way from Surabaya, East Java, to Singapore. Flight QZ8501 lost contact after the pilot sought permission to climb to 38 thousand feet from 32 thousand feet to avoid stormy weather over the sea between Bangka Belitung and West Kalimantan. The aircraft took off from Juanda International airport in Surabaya at 5:36 a.m. local time and lost contact with the Jakarta air traffic control at 6:17 a.m. local time. (*) Reported by Abdul Malik Ibrahim