Wreckage of Indonesian airliner found at sea

RELIEF

In a Makassar hotel where relatives of the Adam Air passengers have been staying, Rosmala Dewi, mother of a flight attendant on the plane, told reporters:

"I feel a bit relieved if it is true that the search team has found that piece. We have waited so long, and we have received so many confusing reports. We do not know whether to go home or stay here forever."

"I cannot hide the fact relatives feel happy with this news, we have waited anxiously for too long," said Fanny Duran, 46, whose sister, brother-in-law and their child were on the plane.

"As human beings we have lost hope after 10 days but if God wants a miracle to happen it will happen, including the existence of survivors," he told Reuters.

Two truckloads of soldiers were deployed to Pare Pare to help comb the beaches, with rubber boats also being used in the area.

Pare Pare is about 150 km (90 miles) south of Mamuju in west Sulawesi, which had been the hunt's main focus since Monday when Indonesian ships detected large metal objects on the sea bed.

At the site further north where the objects were detected, a U.S. Navy oceanographic ship, the Mary Sears, was helping in the search but had yet to determine whether the objects were wreckage.

The plane vanished less than three days after a ferry with more than 600 aboard capsized and sank off Java. Survivors of that accident were still being found nine days later hundreds of kilometres (miles) away, indicating the power of ocean currents in parts of Indonesia.

Both disasters have raised questions over transport safety standards in Indonesia, particularly with a string of budget airlines springing up in Indonesia over the past few years.

(Additional reporting by Mita Valina Liem, Harry Suhartono and Muara Makarim in Jakarta)