A woman who perished in the AirAsia disaster told her relatives at the airport she was going to “spend time alone at sea” for her birthday — chilling words that have left her family reeling.
Meiji Thejakusuma, a fashion store owner, uttered the eerily prescient words before she boarded Flight QZ8501, which mysteriously went down in the Java Sea on Dec. 28 with 162 people aboard, the Daily Mail reported.
Thejakusuma planned to mark her 45th birthday on Jan. 3 with a luxury cruise to Malaysia and Thailand. Instead, her body was recovered at sea and returned to her grief-stricken family in Surabaya, Indonesia.
Eric Edi Santo, her nephew, addressed 100 friends and relatives at a vigil held for his aunt.
“We asked her, ‘How are you going to celebrate your birthday?’ She said jokingly: ‘I’ll spend time alone at sea,’” he said. “Maybe God was trying to be good to her, and didn’t want her to spend her birthday alone at sea, so he brought her back.”
Thejakusuma boarded the ill-fated flight with her husband, mother, three kids and prospective son-in-law.
The body of her 10-year-old daughter, Stevie, was among the 37 recovered so far, with 125 others from the Airbus A320-200 still unaccounted for — including Thejakusuma’s husband, Jie Charly Gunawan, 48; her mother, Jo Indri, 82; her two other children, Steven, 19, and Stephanie, 28; and Stephanie’s fiancé, Christanto Leoma Hutama.
“We hope for a survivor … at least just one of them,” Santo said. “I hope that one of them can come back alive. If not, we hope that all of their bodies at least will be here — we don’t want any missing bodies. They died so tragically, at least I want them to have a proper burial.”
Meanwhile, Indonesia has expanded the search area for the plane, as rough seas and strong winds moved debris and hampered efforts to reach suspected chunks of the fuselage.
No pings have been detected from the airliner’s all-important black box, because the rough weather has prevented the deployment of vessels that drag ping locators.
The black box is probably in the tail section of the plane that an Indonesian ship may have discovered. It holds the key to finding out what led to the accident — though the batteries in the pingers are likely to die in about 20 more days.