QZ8501: 16 bodies recovered

Indonesian recovery teams narrowed the search area for AirAsia Flight 8501 on Friday, hopeful they were closing in on the plane's crash site, with a total of 16 bodies and more debris recovered from the sea.

French and Singaporean investigators joined the hunt for the Airbus A320-200, which disappeared from radar during a storm on Sunday en route from Indonesia's second city of Surabaya to Singapore with 162 people on board.

The search teams have deployed side-scan sonar equipment to survey the seabed and pinger locators to fine-tune their search for the plane's black boxes, crucial to determining the cause of the crash in the shallow waters of the Java Sea off Borneo.

Rough weather has in recent days hampered the search for the plane's fuselage, which is believed to be in relatively shallow water of around 25-32 metres (82-105 feet).

Search and rescue agency chief chief Bambang Soelistyo said Friday's operation was focused on an area of 1,575 square nautical miles -- a tenth of the size of Thursday's search -- with 29 ships and 17 aircraft engaged in the operation.

"There are two main tasks in this priority sector: First, to locate the biggest part of the plane's body," he told a press conference.

"The second task is to find the position of the black boxes, or flight recorders, which will be carried out by the KNKT (National Transport Safety committee) which start working today."

"Divers are already on standby at the navy ship Banda Aceh to dive on that priority area to locate the body of the plane," he said, voicing hope for a "significant result".

Another search official, SB Supriyadi, said the bodies and debris recovered so far had been found within a relatively small area, which indicated the fuselage was likely nearby.

"We found parts of the plane which could be part of the wing or the plane's interior," he said on local television channel MetroTV, displaying a white wooden structure about 1.5 metres by 1.0 metre (five feet by three feet) with part of a corrugated hose attached.

Former transport minister Jusman Syafii Djamal said it appeared to be part of a wing flap.

Supriyadi told MetroTV that they had also detected a metal structure but it proved to be a false lead, possibly a sunken ship.

There are dozens of shipwrecks in the Java Sea, both modern and from World War II when the area was the scene of a major naval battle between the Allies and the invading Japanese.