Underwater photos showed the cracked fuselage and part of a wing of Flight QZ8501, that went down on December 28 in stormy weather during a short trip from the Indonesian city of Surabaya to Singapore.
The National Search and Rescue Agency (BASARNAS) of the Republic of Indonesia has retrieved 7 bodies of the victims of the ill-fated Air Asia plane QZ 8501 in the Karimata Strait area
The data was transmitted before the aircraft disappeared from the screens of air traffic controllers in Jakarta on Sunday, added the source, who declined to be identified.
The bodies were taken from an air force plane to a military ambulance to be transported to a hospital for examination and identification -- but many exhausted families were left waiting for news as bad weather hampered search efforts.
The pilot of the missing Air Asia aircraft with 162 people on board had requested a deviation due to weather before its contact with the Indonesian Air Traffic Control (ATC) was lost
Flight QZ 8501, an Airbus 320-200, lost contact with the Jakarta air traffic control tower at 6:17 a.m. (6.17 p.m. EST), Indonesian Transport Ministry official Hadi Mustofa told media.
Both and Singaporean Indonesian authorities have launched search and rescue operations for the Indonesia AirAsia aircraft which lost contact with Jakarta air traffic control on Sunday morning