Experts believed they had finally discovered the fuselage, or main body of the aircraft, but instead, the 22-metre-long object detected on the sea floor turned out to be aircraft debris and passenger belongings.
"We have not succeeded in finding the large body of the aircraft, but we are optimistic that we will find it soon," Muhammad Syaugi, head of Indonesia’s Search and Rescue Agency said in a press conference at the Integrated SAR Post in Jakarta International Container Terminal 2, Tanjung Priok Port, Wednesday evening.
Furthermore, the optismism is strengthened by the search results using Remotly Operated Underwater Vehicle (ROV) which displays visual images of underwater conditions. Not only that, Ping Detector equipment that detects signals of the presence of an aircraft blackbox also sends a positive signal to the existence of the object.
However, Mr Syaugi added, the SAR team had a difficult problem in the area. Underwater currents are quite heavy. Not only that, at the bottom of the waters there were country's oil and gas company's pipes which were risky for them to lowering anchors or lego.
Indonesian President Joko Widodo on Wednesday said that more than 30 ships and helicopters, and divers were currently working hard to search for fuselage, black boxes and victims.
As per Wednesday there was 56 body bags that have been received by Disaster Victim Identification (DVI) team of Indonesian Police Force, as mentioned in country's National Search and Rescue team (Basarnas) Twitter account.
Basarnas continues the search effort today.
Ground staff lost touch with flight JT610 of Indonesian budget airline Lion Air just 13 minutes after the Boeing 737 MAX 8 took off early on Monday from Jakarta, on its way to the tin-mining town of Pangkal Pinang.
