While bad weather has slowed down the retrieval of the 162 bodies from AirAsia Flight QZ8501, because the wreckage has drifted by over 50 kilometers from Wednesday's location, the search and rescue team expects most of the corpse to be washed ashore on beaches in Pangkalan Bun. This would lessen the need to dive to retrieve the bodies.

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The town in Borneo Island is the closest to the crash site, said Vice Air Marshal Sunarbowo Sandi, coordinator of the search and rescue for the dead passengers and crew of the ill-fated Airbus jet, reports Bangkok Post.

On Wednesday, the rescuers retrieved seven bodies, including one flight attendant, based on the red cabin crew uniform she had on. The corpses were placed inside wooden boxes and numbered, with flowers placed on top of the boxes.

To help identify the bodies, some of the relatives had their blood samples taken for DNA tests, while others gave photos with images unique to their loved ones such as tattoos or birth marks to facilitate the process. These items were collected in Surabaya.

The initial plan was for 125 family members to go to Pangkalan Bun, 160 kilometers from where the corpses were first seen by rescuers on helicopter search teams, but authorities suggested for relatives to instead give items to help identify their kin and so as not to slow down the retrieval operations, disclosed Trikora Hardjo, general manager of the Surabaya airport.

While most of the passengers were Indonesians, majority were Christians with 41 of them belonging to the Manwar Sharon Church, a Christian group based in Surabaya.

Although authorities will need to retrieve the plane's black box to find out what happened to the aircraft, one possible angle that could possibly crop up is safety.

According to the New York Times, Indonesia's aviation sector scored only 61 percent in an audit made by UN auditors who came to Jakarta in May. That rating is below global average in all categories. In fact, Indonesia scored lower than less developed Asian neighbors such as Laos and Myanmar.

Because of Indonesia's poor safety record, the death rate due to aircraft crashes in the past 10 years is one for every 1 million passengers, higher by 25 times the rate in the US, said Massachusetts Institute of Technology statistician.

Tagsairasia flight 8501, plane crash