The discovery of the body raises questions over what happened to the flight as it suggests some passengers may have been alive when the plane entered the water.
It was also revealed that Indonesian search officials have now found the fuselage of the plane, upside down on the Java sea bed.
They discovered a shadow shortly before darkness in water that is up to 165ft deep.
Ships and planes had been scouring the Java Sea for Flight QZ8501 since Sunday, when it lost contact during bad weather about 40 minutes into its flight from the Indonesian city of Surabaya to Singapore.
Seven bodies have been recovered from the sea, some fully clothed, which could indicate the Airbus A320-200 was intact when it hit the water. That would support a theory that it suffered an aerodynamic stall.
The fact that one person put on a life jacket would appear to indicate those on board had at least some time before the aircraft hit the water, or after it hit the water and before it sank.
And yet the pilots did not issue a distress signal. The plane disappeared after it failed to get permission to fly higher to avoid bad weather because of heavy air traffic.
‘This morning, we recovered a total of four bodies and one of them was wearing a life jacket,’ Tatang Zaenudin, an official with the search and rescue agency said.
He declined to speculate on what the find might mean.
MORE: AirAsia plane found: Salvage operation continues as bodies are pulled from sea
Hernanto, head of the search and rescue agency in Surabaya, said rescuers believed they had found the plane on the sea bed with a sonar scan in water about 100ft to 165ft deep. The black box flight data and cockpit voice recorder has yet to be found.
Authorities in Surabaya were making preparations to receive and identify bodies, including arranging 130 ambulances to take victims to a police hospital and collecting DNA from relatives.
‘We are praying it is the plane so the evacuation can be done quickly,’ Hernanto said.
Most of the people on board were Indonesians. No survivors have been found.
Officials said waves two to three metres (six to nine feet) high and winds were hampering the hunt for wreckage and preventing divers from searching the crash zone.
‘The fact that the debris appears fairly contained suggests the aircraft broke up when it hit the water, rather than in the air,’ said Neil Hansford, a former pilot and chairman of consultancy firm Strategic Aviation Solutions.
Indonesian President Joko Widodo said his priority was retrieving the bodies.
Widodo, speaking in Surabaya on Tuesday after grim images of the scene in the Java Sea were broadcast on television, said AirAsia would pay an immediate advance of money to relatives, many of whom collapsed in grief when they saw the television pictures from the search.
AirAsia Chief Executive Tony Fernandes has described the crash as his ‘worst nightmare’.
About 30 ships and 21 aircraft from Indonesia, Australia, Malaysia, Singapore, South Korea and the United States have been involved in the search.
Singapore said it was sending two underwater beacon detectors to try to pick up pings from the black boxes, which contain cockpit voice and flight data recorders.
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