Search teams hunting for the wreck of an AirAsia passenger jet that crashed with 162 people on board have found four large parts of the plane on the sea bed.
A multi-national task force of ships, planes and helicopters has been scouring the northern Java Sea and coastline of southern Borneo to recover the bodies of victims and locate the wreck of Flight QZ8501 and its black box flight recorders.
"We've found four big parts from the plane we're looking for," search and rescue agency chief Fransiskus Bambang Soelistyo told reporters in Jakarta.
The breakthrough came as authorities said that Indonesia AirAsia had violated the terms of its licence for the Surabaya to Singapore route by flying on a Sunday, the day the Airbus A320-200 plunged into the Java Sea, and announced they would investigate the carrier's other schedules.
One large object was pinpointed by a ship searching during the night, Soelistyo said, and three more, the largest of which was around 18 metres long, were located on Saturday.
Another official, Supriyadi, who is coordinating the operation from the port of Pangkalan Bun in Borneo, said earlier that poor visibility had hampered efforts to capture images of the objects with underwater remote operating vehicles (ROVs).
"The visibility is only two metres," he said. "It's cloudy, making it difficult for the cameras to detect."
Divers, including a team of Russian specialists who just arrived in Pangkalan Bun, may be able to investigate the suspected wreckage on Sunday if the weather improves, officials said.
No survivors have been found from the crash, which happened about 40 minutes after the plane took off from Indonesia's second largest city in an area known for intense tropical thunderstorms during the current monsoon season.
A report from Indonesia's weather bureau said it was likely the plane had flown into bad weather which would have been difficult to avoid, and that it was possible this had caused ice to form on its engines.
"Based on the available data on the last received location of the aircraft, the weather was a factor in causing the accident," the weather bureau said.
Indonesian authorities on Friday questioned whether the pilot had followed correct weather procedures, and later suspended Indonesia AirAsia's Surabaya to Singapore flights, saying the airline's operating licence only permitted flights on Mondays, Tuesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays.
Djoko Murdjatmodjo, Indonesia's acting Director General of Air Transportation, said on Saturday that the Transport Ministry would investigate other routes used by the carrier, which flies from at least 15 Indonesian destinations.
"We are going to investigate all AirAsia flight schedules. Hopefully we can start on next Monday," he said. "It is possible AirAsia's licence in Indonesia might be revoked," he added.
Sunu Widyatmoko, Indonesia AirAsia chief, told reporters the airline, which is 49-percent owned by Malaysia-based AirAsia , would cooperate with the inquiry.
"The government has suspended our flights from Surabaya to Singapore and back," he said. "They are doing the evaluation process. AirAsia will cooperate fully with the evaluation."
Much effort has focused on finding the mostly Indonesian victims of the crash.
Thirty bodies have been recovered from the sea, although rescue official Supriyadi, who like many Indonesians uses just one name, said it was unlikely more would be found floating.
"Because we're already in the seventh day ... the chances are they have all sunk," he said. "There's a possibility they'll be found on beaches."
Small pieces of the aircraft and other debris have also been found, but there has been no sign of the crucial voice and flight data recorders - the so-called black boxes that investigators hope will unravel the sequence of events in the cockpit during the doomed jet's final minutes.
