Effort fails to raise AirAsia plane fuselage

A fresh attempt to raise the fuselage of AirAsia flight QZ8501, which crashed into the Java Sea last month killing all 162 on board, failed Sunday after it was considered to be too fragile to be lifted, a media report said.

Rear Admiral Widodo, the Indonesian admiral in charge of operations to recover the crashed plane, said the bid to recover the wreckage failed as it kept breaking into pieces, BBC reported.

An initial effort to raise the fuselage, which is at a depth of 30 metres, failed Saturday after ropes around it snapped under the weight of water.

Indonesian officials believe the Airbus A320-200 may have climbed too fast to try to avoid a storm and stalled.

The jet was flying from Surabaya in Indonesia to Singapore.

The plane's cockpit voice recorder and flight data recorder were found last week.

A preliminary report on the crash is expected to be filed next week, although the full investigation will take months.

Divers entered the main section of the fuselage for the first time Friday.

Poor weather and difficult sea conditions have hampered the salvage operation since the main section of the aircraft was found.

On Saturday, the salvage team tied a lifting bag to the wreckage, which was capable of raising it up to 10 metres.

However, seven metres from the surface, strong currents and the sharp edges of the emergency door of the aircraft cut the rope connecting the bag to the fuselage.