Divers looking for the wreck of the crashed AirAsia Indonesia jet off Borneo were unable to resume full-scale operations on Thursday in poor weather and heavy seas.

Rescue teams now fear it could take a week to find the black box flight recorders and establish exactly what went caused the Airbus A320-200 jet carrying 162 passangers and crew to crash.

Crews were on standby to descend to a large object detected by sonar on the ocean floor, lying just 30-50 metres (100-165 feet) deep. Rescuers believe it is the plane, which disappeared on Sunday en route from the Indonesian city of Surabaya to Singapore.

“I am hoping that the latest information is correct and aircraft has been found,” airline boss Tony Fernandes tweeted on Thursday. “Please all hope together. This is so important.”

Toos Sanitiyoso, an air safety investigator with the National Committee for Transportation Safety, said he hoped the black box flight data and voice recorders could be found within a week, suggesting there was still doubt over the plane’s location.

“The main thing is to find the main area of the wreckage and then the black box,” he told reporters. None of the tell-tale black box “pings” had been detected, he said.

A break in bad weather on Thursday morning raised hopes that divers would be able to investigate the object, but frogman commander Lieutenant Edi Tirkayasa said the weather had worsened and was making it difficult for even professional rescue divers.

“What is most difficult is finding the location where the plane fell – checking whether the aircraft is really there,” he told Reuters.

“This is very difficult even with sophisticated equipment. With weather like this, who knows. We are still hopeful and optimistic that they’ll find it. They must.”



Investigators are working on a theory that the plane stalled as it climbed steeply to avoid a storm about 40 minutes into the flight.

So far, at least eight bodies have been recovered from the Java Sea. They have been taken in numbered coffins to Surabaya, where relatives of the victims have gathered, for identification. Authorities have been collecting DNA from the relatives to help identify the bodies.

Some of the bodies recovered so far have been fully clothed, including a flight attendant still wearing her AirAsia uniform. That could indicate the Airbus was intact when it hit the water and also support the aerodynamic stall theory.

Most of the 162 people on board were Indonesians. No survivors have been found.



Strong wind and waves hampered the search, and with visibility at less than a kilometre (half a mile), the air operation was called off on Wednesday afternoon.

Indonesian President Joko Widodo said his priority was retrieving the bodies.

Relatives, many of whom collapsed in grief when they saw the first grim television pictures confirming their fears on Tuesday, held prayers at a crisis centre at Surabaya airport.



The plane was travelling at 32,000 feet (9,753 metres) and had asked to fly at 38,000 feet to avoid bad weather. When air traffic controllers granted permission for a rise to 34,000 feet a few minutes later, they received no response.

A source close to the probe into what happened said radar data appeared to show that the aircraft made an “unbelievably” steep climb before it crashed, possibly pushing it beyond the Airbus A320’s limits.

“So far, the numbers taken by the radar are unbelievably high. This rate of climb is very high, too high. It appears to be beyond the performance envelope of the aircraft,” he said.

The source, who declined to be named, added that more information was needed to come to a firm conclusion.

Online discussion among pilots has centred on unconfirmed secondary radar data from Malaysia that suggested the aircraft was climbing at a speed of 353 knots, about 100 knots too slow, and that it might have stalled.

The Indonesian captain, a former air force fighter pilot, had 6,100 flying hours under his belt and the plane last underwent maintenance in mid-November, according to the airline, which is 49 percent owned by Malaysia-based budget carrier AirAsia.

Three airline disasters involving Malaysian-affiliated carriers in less than a year have dented confidence in the country’s aviation industry and spooked travellers.

Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370 went missing in March on a trip from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing with 239 passengers and crew and has not been found. On July 17, the same airline’s Flight MH17 was shot down over Ukraine, killing all 298 people on board.

On board Flight QZ8501 were 155 Indonesians, three South Koreans, and one person each from Singapore, Malaysia and Britain. The co-pilot was French.

The AirAsia group, including affiliates in Thailand, the Philippines and India, had not suffered a crash since its Malaysian budget operations began in 2002.