Mike Chinoy: No answers yet in Taiwan tragedy

CNN's Mike Chinoy

(CNN) -- Rescue crews searched Sunday for bodies and debris from the China Airlines passenger jet that crashed into the Taiwan Strait with 225 people on board.

Officials said they hold out little hope of finding any survivors from Saturday's crash. The investigation into why the plane went down seems to be turning up more questions than answers.

CNN Correspondent Mike Chinoy reported the latest Sunday from the Penghu Islands near Taiwan.

CHINOY: I am standing at a small air base which has been turned into both a morgue and a reception center for relatives of those who died when China Airlines flight CI 611 crashed [Saturday]. The building to my left has become a makeshift morgue. Inside now are dozens of bodies.

MORE STORIES China Airlines plane 'disintegrated' before crash

Taiwanese coast guard vessels have been pulling bodies from the sea throughout the day, although a lot of those on board, their remains have not been recovered.

ANALYSIS • China Airlines' troubled history    EXTRA INFORMATION Gallery: Taiwan tragedy  Timeline: Major air disasters in Asia     CNN.com Asia More news from our Asia edition

The bodies inside here [are] being identified by relatives, then placed into coffins as Buddhist volunteers chant, and other religious groups also are here helping the hundreds and hundreds of family members who have been flown to this island by China Airlines.

Meanwhile, the investigation continues, but there are more questions than answers.

Taiwanese aviation officials say that the plane did, in fact, break apart at about 30,000 feet and plunge to the Earth.

One of the mysteries is that the bodies that have been retrieved -- and we've been watching that all day long, and I can even see into the morgue here -- are, by and large, intact, and do not appear to have any signs of burns or the kind of trauma that would be associated with a midair explosion.

In addition, the pilot did not radio any kind of distress call or a mayday signal. And so there is simply no indication as to what may have happened.

Investigators have not yet located the black box, the cockpit voice recorder that might give them some clues, although all the signs were that communications from the aircraft were normal on what would have been a very routine flight in one of the busiest air routes in Asia.

Earlier [Sunday], nearly 900 family members were brought to the seashore, almost in view of where the plane went down, and we saw heart-wrenching scenes -- people wailing, shrieking, shouting out the names of their loved ones as they peered into the distance. A day of tragedy here, compounded by the continuing mystery.

CNN: You talked [Saturday] and mentioned a little bit [Sunday] about this airline having such a poor safety record. Is this finally going to be the time where this airline is put under heavy scrutiny and looked at much more seriously?

CHINOY: China Airlines has had problems with its safety record. It has been under intense scrutiny. It had a change of management a couple of years ago. It had pledged to do everything possible to turn its reputation around, to make safety the No. 1 priority. Certainly, this is not going to help the airline, and it will increase the pressure.

I was looking in one of the Chinese language newspapers earlier [Sunday], and there was a commentary which said, "Yet another accident, yet again China Airlines." So the spotlight and the pressure and the scrutiny on the airline are very intense indeed.

And yet, as one China Airlines official with whom I was speaking earlier noted, in his many years of working with the airline -- and he's been around for all the earlier crashes -- he said he's never been involved in any episode as mysterious, as puzzling as this one.

So there are an awful lot of questions, suspicions of course, because of the airline's poor safety record. But at this point, we simply don't have any answers.