The first two bodies from the AirAsia Flight QZ8501 tragedy have arrived back into Indonesia in coffins.

Soldiers acting as pall bearers carried the coffins into Indonesia’s Surabaya airport, from which the ill-fated plane departed, on Wednesday.

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The bodies were taken from an air force plane to a military ambulance to be transported to a hospital for examination and identification – but many exhausted families were left waiting for news as bad weather hampered search efforts.

Officials had hoped to recover most of the bodies but rough conditions made it difficult for helicopters to fly over the area in the Java Sea where several corpses and debris from the Airbus A320-200 were found a day earlier.

After taking off on Sunday in Surabaya, Indonesia’s second-biggest city, the plane was destined for Singapore.

But it was never to arrive, and on Wednesday the city was also the venue for drained and emotional relatives of the 162 people on board to gather at a crisis centre to hand over documents and medical records.

Among them was Hadi Widjaja, 60, who was preparing a Muslim funeral for his son Andreas and daughter-in-law Enny Wahyuni.

“I am anxious to know if the rescuers have found their bodies. The president has said that they will do the best they can to find them,” Widjaja said.

“But if they really cannot find them, I will scatter flowers in the sea here as a way to say goodbye.”

Police in Surabaya said they had taken DNA from 30 immediate family members to assist with the identification of bodies at a local hospital, to which the crisis centre is also being shifted.

Seven bodies have been recovered from the sea so far, including a female in a flight attendant’s uniform, officials said, and all of them were now expected to reach Surabaya on Thursday.

— with AAP