AirAsia didn’t have permission to fly from Surabaya to Singapore on the Sunday morning that flight QZ8501 crashed into the Java Sea.

Indonesia's transport ministry said the plane had been flying on an 'unauthorised schedule' when it crashed, and the airliner has now been suspended from flying the route from the city of Surabaya to Singapore.

Indonesian authorities also said that recovery teams have found four big parts of AirAsia Flight 8501, which crashed into the sea last weekend with 162 people on board.

The Wall Street Journal reported that transport ministry spokesman J.A. Barata said the airline was only permitted to fly the route on Mondays, Tuesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays from late 2014 to early 2015.

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Indonesian Navy personnel carry a bag containing the dead body of a passenger of AirAsia Flight 8501 at sea off the coast of Pangkalan Bun

Bodies of victims of AirAsia flight QZ8501 are kept inside body bags at the Indonesian navy vessel KRI Banda Aceh

Search teams hunting for the wreckage of AirAsia Flight QZ8501 have had a breakthrough after discovering two big parts of the aircraft

Search team came across 'two big objects' in the Java Sea off the island of Borneo late on Friday night

When the flight crashed on Sunday, it was reportedly flying on an unauthorised schedule

Rescue workers searching for victims of AirAsia Flight 8501 pulled 21 bodies from the Java Sea yesterday, the largest number so far, including five that were still strapped into their seats

Today's finds bring the total number of bodies recovered to 30. There were 162 passengers and crew on board the Airbus A320-200 when it fell from the skies on Sunday

After being recovered from the ocean the bodies are placed in numbered makeshift caskets at a hospital in Pangkalan Bun, Borneo, before being flown back to Indonesia

'So AirAsia has committed a violation of the route that has been given to them,' Mr. Barata said. He said the company’s flights from Surabaya to Singapore had consequently been postponed.

Tommy Soetomo, the head of state-owned airport operator PT Angkasa Pura I, said AirAsia had been allocated a slot to fly on Sundays. But Mr. Barata said that information was outdated and that AirAsia should have returned the slot to the government.

Before October, AirAsia had permission to fly daily to Singapore from Surabaya, Indonesia’s second largest city, he said. He didn’t say why the number of flights was cut.

The two big parts of the plane were found in the Java Sea off the island of Borneo late on Friday night, raising hopes that the remaining bodies and the black boxes, crucial to determining the cause of the crash, will soon be located.

A Russian search and rescue team carry their equipment after arriving in a Russian BE-200 amphibious aircraft in Pangkalan Bun

Indonesian Search and Rescue Agency personnel prepare diving equipment to search victims of AirAsia QZ8501

Indonesian Search and Rescue Agency personnel prepare robot diver to search for victims of AirAsia QZ8501

'With the discovery of an oil spill and two big parts of the aircraft, I can assure you these are the parts of the AirAsia plane we have been looking for,' search and rescue agency chief Bambang Soelistyo told reporters.

He said the larger of the objects were around 10 metres by five metres (32 feet by 16 feet).

'As I speak we are lowering an ROV (remotely operated underwater vehicle) underwater to get an actual picture of the objects detected on the sea floor. All are at the depth of 30 metres,' Mr Soelistyo said.

Earlier on Friday, recovery teams pulled 21 bodies from the Java Sea.

AirAsia CEO Tony Fernandes (R) attending a funeral ceremony for Khairunisa, a flight attendant onboardthe fatal flight

Medical teams have collected information from relatives on the victims, including their appearance, birthmarks and any surgical scars, in an attempt to help identify the bodies

Bodies in makeshift caskets are loaded into a military transport plane in Borneo before being transported to a police hospital in Surabaya, Indonesia, where families have gathered

The total is the largest of the search so far, more than tripling the number of bodies recovered from nine to 30, as dive teams say some were found still strapped into their seats.

While the black box has eluded search boats so far, this afternoon crews announced they have found the tail of the plane sitting 100ft below the ocean's surface using sonar devices.

It is still not known what caused the Airbus A320-200 to plunge into the ocean last Sunday and the plane's black box recorder, which will contain vital information, has yet to be located.

A medical worker moves among the corpses at a makeshift morgue inside the police hospital in Surabaya, where the victims are taken for their relatives to identify

Around a third of the bodies found today were located by an American ship, the USS Sampson. Here American Navy personnel help unload corpses from a helicopter

Dive teams have been left frustrated after bad weather severely hampered search efforts, but today's operation has tripled the number of corpses recovered

Radar ships have discovered large 'shadows' on the seabed which the military suspect is the wreckage of Flight 8501 which they say will likely contain scores more bodies

Dive teams have been left frustrated as dire weather has prevented them from searching several large objects identified on the sea bed which may be parts of the plane's fuselage.

Search vessels, including a minesweeping craft and a private radar boat, have also been unable to detect 'pings' - tiny electrical signals - which are usually emitted by the box to signal its position.

In emotional scenes, three more victims were identified and handed to their families for burial at Surabaya hospital. They included Grayson Herbert Linaksita, an 11-year-old boy, and 22-year-old Khairunisa Binti Haidar Fauzi, an air hostess with AirAsia.

Of the bodies pulled from the ocean, around a third were found by American vessel USS Sampson, while five were strapped into their seats according to Colonel Yayan Sofiyan, commander of warship Bung Tomo.

Three bodies have been identified today, including that of Grayson Herbert Linaksita, an 11-year-old boy who has been reunited with his relatives

The family of Grayson Linaksita break down in tears as the body of the 11-year-old boy is handed to them

The body of an air stewardess, Khairunisa Binti Haidar Fauzi, was also among the three identified today

There were more emotional scenes at the police hospital in Surabaya, Indonesia, today as bodies of those who died were identified and handed over for burial

Kevin Alexander Soetjipto was the third passenger to be identified from dental records today, after the first passenger Hayati Lutfiah Hamid was identified yesterday

International experts armed with sophisticated acoustic detection devices joined the team of searchers on Friday evening.

Given Flight QZ8501 crashed in shallow seas, experts say finding the boxes should not be difficult if its locator beacons, with a range of 2,000 to 3,000 metres and a battery life of about 30 days, are working.

The data recorder contains crucial information like engine temperature and vertical and horizontal speed. The voice recorder saves discussion between pilots and other sounds from the cockpit.

Toos Saniotoso, an Indonesian air safety investigator, said investigators 'are looking at every aspect' as they try to determine why the plane crashed.

Relatives of Hendra Gunawan Syawal, victim of the AirAsia Flight QZ8501 crash pray near his coffin at Adi Yasa funeral home in Surabaya, Indonesia

Workers carry the coffin of Meiji Thejakusuma, into Adi Yasa funeral home

The mother of Hendra Gunawan Syawal prays near her son's coffin at Adi Yasa funeral home

He added: 'From the operational side, the human factor, the technical side, the ATC (air traffic control) - everything is valuable to us.'

Drizzle and light clouds covered the area this morning, and rain, strong winds and high waves up to 13ft were forecast until Sunday. Strong sea currents have also kept debris moving.

The plane, carrying 162 passengers and crew, went down on Sunday around 40 minutes into a flight from Surabaya, Indonesia's second-largest city, to Singapore.

Minutes before disappearing from radar, the pilot told air traffic control he was approaching a storm, but was denied permission to climb above it because of heavy air traffic.

While the actual cause is unknown, one expert has theorised that the pilot managed to land the plane successfully on the ocean, before it was overwhelmed by waves and sank.

Search teams say they have identified the tail end of the plane sitting 95 feet below the sea's surface using side scanning radar - which emits sonar pulses than analyses the echo that bounces back

Crew members of Indonesian Air Force NAS 332 Super Puma helicopter look out of the windows during a search operation

Indonesian Air Force personnel carry suspected debris after it was delivered by helicopter from a recovery mission for missing AirAsia flight QZ8501 at the airport in Pangkalan Bun yesterday

Indonesian Airforce personnel recovered more debris from the plane on January 2

Relatives of AirAsia passengers arrive at East Java Police headquarters to help identify the victims

Dudi Sudibyo, senior editor of aviation magazine Angkasa, said that emergency locator transmitters fitted to the plane were primed to go off in the event of a strong impact, but never triggered.

He says that if the captain, who was an experience pilot, managed to land safely before the craft sank, this could explain why no signal was transmitted.

However, other experts, examining radar data leaked from the investigation, disagreed.

Instead they said the plane was batted from the skies by immensely powerful winds that caused it to rise up at the same rate as a fighter jet, before dropping almost vertically into the ocean.

Their conclusion is that the Airbus 320-200 was in the grip of weather so freakishly extreme that there was nothing the pilots could have done to save the jet and all 162 people on board.

The plane behaved in ways ‘bordering on the edge of logic,’ Indonesian aviation analyst Gerry Soejatman said after examining figures leaked from the official air crash investigation team.

But on Friday Mr Soejatman said the jet climbed at a speed that would have been impossible for the pilot to have achieved - and then plunged straight down ‘like a piece of metal being thrown down.'

‘It’s really hard to comprehend…the way it goes down is bordering on the edge of logic.’

Australian aviation expert, Peter Marosszeky, from the University of NSW, told the Sydney Morning Herald that, in contrast, he was baffled by the extremely low speed of the descent - as low as 61 knots - which would suggest the plane was heading almost straight down, explaining why it has been found in water just 10km from its last point of radar contact.

Lt. Col. Johnson Simanjuntak of Indonesian Commander Air Field Iskandar Pangkalan Bun shows off parts of a plane found floating on the water near the site where AirAsia Flight 8501 disappeared

Indonesian Air Force personnel carry suspected debris after it was delivered by helicopter from a recovery mission

Members of the Indonesian military carefully carried debris from the plane

Experts examining flight data leaked from the AirAsia crash investigation said the plane behaved in ways 'bordering on the edge of logic' after rising thousands of feet into the air before falling almost vertically

Both experts are in agreement that the jet went down almost vertically - and also concluded that a freak weather pattern that placed the aircraft under extraordinary forces was to blame for its plight.

Mr Soejatman meanwhile remains convinced that the reason for the crash is possibly because the aircraft was caught in a severe updraft, followed by an equally severe ground draft.

He said that leaked figures showed the plane climbed at a virtually unprecedented rate of 6000ft to 9000ft per minute and ‘you can’t do that at altitude in an Airbus 320 with pilot action.’

Indonesian Navy frogmen and underwater demolition unit personnel on a boat look as body bags containing dead bodies of passengers

Indonesian navy officers and rescue team members transfer dead bodies of victims of AirAsia flight QZ8501 from a helicopter

The most that could normally be expected, he said, would be 1000ft to 1500ft on a sustained basis, gaining 3000ft in a burst.

But then the aircraft fell at an even more incredible rate of 11,000ft a minute, with extraordinary bursts of up to 24,000ft a minute - figures higher than the Air France A330 Airbus that crashed into the Atlantic in 2009, killing 228 passengers after attaining baffling ascent and descent rates.

Mr Marosszeky agreed that a climb rate of at least 6000ft a minute would indicate a ‘severe weather event,’ because that rate of climb was a ‘domain for jet fighters.’

Military personnel carry caskets containing the remains of passengers recovered off the coast of Borneo

In a fascinating, yet worrying, comment earlier in the week, AirAsia chief executive Tony Fernandes suggested that climate change was making weather worse and flying riskier, particularly in the tropics.

Meanwhile Mr Fernandes promised that he would fly with the family of flight QZ8501 and the body of stewardess Ms Khairunnisa to her home town in Palembang, Indonesia, once her body has been positively identified.

The stewardess was still in her red AirAsia uniform when she was recovered.