The wreckage of AirAsia flight QZ8501 has been located and nine bodies have been recovered but the Black Box is still lying somewhere on the seabed. Unless that is located and its data examined by experts, it is not possible to know what exactly happened and how the aircraft crashed and met a watery grave.

In the opinion of the investigators, it could take a week to recover the all-important bits of evidence in the form of the flight data recorder because the rough seas continue to obstruct the search.

It may be recalled that the Airbus A320-200 was carrying 162 people when it disappeared in a storm as it was en-route from the Indonesian city of Surabaya to Singapore on Sunday.

The nine bodies that have so far been recovered are from the Java Sea, off Borneo, and these have been shipped in numbered coffins to Surabaya for handing over to the distraught relatives who have already gathered there to identify and identify the dead.

The searches had covered an area of nearly 5,200 square miles and involved 19 ships, four helicopters and five planes - this has been revealed by Fransiskus Bambang Soelistyo- head of Indonesia's Search and Rescue Agency.

In the opinion of Toos Sanitiyoso of the National Committee for Transportation Safety - better weather is expected in five days and it could take a week to find the black boxes, which are crucial to determining the cause of the crash.