A naval vessel hunting for the missing AirAsia flight in the Java Sea off the Indonesian coast has found wreckage, which is believed to be the tail section of the aircraft.

Flying from Surabaya in Indonesia to Singapore, the AirAsia Flight QZ8501 with 155 passengers and seven crew members on-board went missing on 28 December.

Before losing contact, the pilot of the Airbus A320-200 had made a request to air traffic control to change the flight to a higher altitude due to bad weather.

However, the request could not be accommodated as the route was busy and the aircraft went missing five minutes later.

Indonesian naval patrol captain Yayan Sofyan was quoted by Reuters as saying: "We found what has a high probability of being the tail of the plane."



"We found what has a high probability of being the tail of the plane."

Sofyan said that the black box voice and flight data recorders are located at the tail part of the aircraft.

The debris recovered will now be confirmed by the Indonesian search-and-rescue agency.

So far, 34 bodies of passengers and crew have been recovered and those missing could be trapped inside the aircraft.

Search-and-rescue teams have widened the search area and their main focus is around 90nm off the Borneo Island coast where sonar-equipped ships detected five large objects, which are believed to be the parts of the missing aircraft, Reuters reported.

The latest incident is the second in a year. Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 disappeared on 8 March 2014 over the Indian Ocean.

Image: AirAsia’s Airbus A320-200 with 155 passengers and seven crew members onboard went missing on 28 December. Photo: courtesy of P Masclet / Airbus SAS.