AirAsia Fuselage Too Fragile to Lift?

A second attempt to lift the fuselage of AirAsia Flight QZ8501 failed on the weekend when a lift line parted.

The 13m long section of fuselage is in waters 100 feet deep. The fuselage had been lifted to within approximately 20 feet of the surface during the salvage operations, and an Indonesian Navy spokesman has blamed strong currents for the failed attempts. 

Rear Admiral Widodo, the Indonesian admiral in charge of operations, told the BBC that the fuselage may be too fragile to be lifted as it is breaking up during the salvage attempts.

So far 70 bodies have been recovered from in and around the wreckage. One body came out of the fuselage as it was falling back to the seabed. Most of those still missing are believed to be in the fuselage, although the bodies of the pilot and co-pilot are believed to be in the cockpit some 500 yards away.

Indonesia AirAsia Flight QZ8501 lost contact with air traffic control in bad weather on December 28, less than halfway into a two-hour flight from the city of Surabaya to Singapore. All 162 people on board were killed.

The airplane appears to have climbed too fast (6,000ft (1,828m) a minute) in an attempt to avoid a storm. This caused the plane to stall.