AirAsia Flight 8501: Bodies Of 2 More Passengers, 1 Crew Identified; 30 Bodies Recovered Overall

Update as of 6:31 a.m. EST: A total of 30 bodies have been recovered so far from the Java Sea, with some of the bodies found belted in their seats, an Indonesian official told MetroTV, according to The Associated Press.

Indonesian Army Gen. Moeldoko said that a total of 65 ships, 14 planes and 19 helicopters have been deployed in an effort to look for victims and debris of AirAsia Flight 8501, which went down Sunday morning, Channel News Asia reported.

Update as of 5:00 a.m. EST: Indonesia’s Search and Rescue Agency said Friday that a total of 22 bodies have been recovered so far from the Java Sea, eight of which are in Surabaya, 10 in Pangkalan Bun and four on a rescue ship, Channel News Asia reported.

AirAsia CEO Tony Fernandes said that he is heading to Surabaya to take the body of crew member Khairunnisa Haida Fauzi, who was identified on Friday, to her hometown of Palembang, the capital city of South Sumatra province.

Two more bodies of passengers of AirAsia Flight 8501 and one crew member have been identified, media reports said, citing officials. The two passengers have been identified as Kevin Alexander Soetjipto and Grayson Herbert Linaksita, while the crew member has been identified as Khairunnisa Haidar Fauzi.

The bodies were identified through dental records, fingerprints and medical records, according to Channel News Asia. Some of the bodies that have been recovered so far are yet to be identified while families of the people on board have been asked to provide more information to complete the identification process. On Thursday, the first victim of the ill-fated aircraft, which crashed in the Java Sea on Sunday, was identified as Hayati Lutfiah Hamid.

According to Australia's ABC News, Soetjipto was a student at Monash University in Melbourne and was traveling with his family to Singapore. The nationalities of the passengers identified are yet to be disclosed.

Meanwhile, four more bodies were reportedly recovered from the sea on Friday, and arrived at Pangkala Bun in a U.S. helicopter. Singapore's Defense Minister Ng Eng Hen said Friday that a passenger's luggage bag was found by a search vessel and has been delivered to Indonesian search authorities.

Eight of the bodies recovered so far have arrived in Surabaya, where relatives of the victims have been waiting since Sunday. Indonesia's Search and Rescue Agency reportedly said that the search area has been prioritized to an area of nearly 2,085 square miles of the Java Sea, where most of the debris has been found.

Search teams are currently looking for the plane’s black boxes that could help determine what caused the crash.