So far, 46 bodies have been recovered from the wreckage of AirAsia flight QZ8501 according to New York Times, the flight had a total of 162 people on board and the remaining bodies are presumed to be inside the fuselage that has not yet been located. The Boeing Airbus A320-200 had crashed in the Java Sea, six days ago while flying from Surabaya in Indonesia to Singapore.

Specialist equipment has already been brought in to help in the search for the plane itself apart from its "black box" flight recorders. However, these have not yet been deployed because of high waves. The Indonesian search and rescue chief Bambang Soelistyo has indicated that two large objects have been found in the search and, out of the 46 dead bodies recovered, some were still strapped into their seats.

The fuselage of the aircraft has yet to be located and other bodies could be within it. Due to high waves of three and four meters height, loading of bodies onto ships and moving them between ships is problematic.

Bambang Soelistyo has also informed the press that the wreckage of the Boeing and bodies were scattered over a 5 km area of the Java Sea and the search is presently concentrating on an area of 1,575 nautical square miles off Borneo.

It seems AirAsia did not have any official permission to fly the Surabaya-Singapore route on Sunday - the day of the crash - but was licensed on four other days of the week.