Searchers Discovers AirAsia Flight QZ8501 Airplane's Fuselage In Java Sea

Jakarta, Indonesia (CNN) - Searchers have located a majority of AirAsia Flight QZ8501's fuselage in the Java Sea, the head of Indonesia's search and rescue agency said Wednesday, raising the prospect that many bodies of the 162 people aboard the flight that crashed last month will soon be found.
The confirmation follows major developments in the investigation of the disaster - the recoveries earlier this week of the plane's cockpit voice and flight data recorders. Searchers saw the plane's main body, with one of its wings attached, via a camera carried by a remotely operated underwater vehicle, Indonesia search chief Bambang Soelistyo said Wednesday.

Key in identifying the debris are the words painted on the section. Pictures released by the search agency appear to show portions of the words "now" and "everyone."

Images show main body of #AirAsia flight #QZ8501 located in Java Sea http://t.co/lCXMINrUOz pic.twitter.com/WZnpzK0xxX
— BBC Breaking News (@BBCBreaking) January 14, 2015

AirAsia says the slogan "Now everyone can fly" had been on the length of the plane, which crashed December 28 as it flew toward Singapore from the Indonesian city of Surabaya. Divers will search the fuselage for bodies Thursday, and if the divers encounter trouble, crews may lift the fuselage out of the water, Soelistyo said.

At least 50 bodies have been recovered from the sea, Soelistyo said. Some of them still were strapped into seats. Officials have said that many of the more than 100 remaining bodies might be found in the plane's fuselage.

Searchers locate #AirAsia8501 fuselage, families to hopefully get answers. http://t.co/wIfpR30AWO (@davidmolkoCNN) http://t.co/uMKA9mCtil
— New Day (@NewDay) January 14, 2015

Soelistyo said the discovered portion of the fuselage, found about a half-mile from where the recorders were located Monday and Tuesday, is about 100 feet long. The length of the Airbus A320-200 was about 120 feet.

On Tuesday, divers retrieved the cockpit voice recorder, which is designed to retain all sounds on a plane's flight deck. On Monday, searchers recovered the plane's other key information source, the flight data recorder, which stores a vast amount of information about the aircraft's performance, including air speed and cabin pressure. Both devices are expected to help investigators understand what went wrong.