SINGAPORE, January 23. /TASS/. Search for AirAsia plane crash victims may be ended on January 27, Indonesian authorities said.
The work is continuing, but after January 27, it will be decided what to do further, the chief of the national search and rescue agency, Bambang Soelistyo, said on Friday, adding he was not sure the operation would continue.
The situation may change, though there are low chances, he said. Earlier, Indonesian authorities said the multinational operation was over, and rescuers and naval forces of several countries, among them Russia, the United States and China, left the area of the search.
Indonesian forces concentrated their efforts on search for bodies of victims. The airliner had 162 people on board, but only 59 bodies have been found. Many bodies are believed to be in the fuselage. Divers have been examining the part of the airbus, but all the attempts of specialists to raise the fragment from the seabed were unsuccessful.
Under the international regulations, authorities must present a preliminary report about crash causes to the International Civil Aviation Organization in 30 days - on January 28.
An official from the national transport safety committee, Nurkahyo Utomo, said a human factor and a technical fault were priority versions. A terrorist attack was ruled out, he added.
No voices of other people or suspicious sounds were heard in the flight recordings, Utomo said.
Contact with the A320-200 was lost and it disappeared from radar screens 40 minutes after it took off on a flight from the city of Surabaya to Singapore on December 28.