Indonesian divers have found six bodies still strapped into their seats near the main section of an AirAsia plane that crashed into the Java Sea last month.

A total of 58 bodies have now been found following the crash of flight QZ8501 which went down on December 28 in stormy weather as it flew from the Indonesian city of Surabaya to Singapore.

There were 162 people on board.

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“We have found six bodies, four of whom were females and two males, all adults,” SB Supriyadi, a rescue agency official co-ordinating the search, said on Thursday.

He said they were found among debris, with some still strapped into their seats, not far from the jet’s main section.
“They were still belted to their seats.

“We believe they spilled out of the fuselage, which is 50 to 100 metres away,” he said.

They had been flown to Pangkalan Bun town on Borneo island, the search headquarters.

He added that divers had yet to reach the main section of the plane, which is thought to contain the bulk of passengers and crew, as visibility under water was only two metres.

“But it is a bright, clear day so we remain optimistic that the divers might reach the wreckage today,” he said.

The main body of the Airbus A320-200 was spotted on the seabed by a military vessel last week following an arduous search in shallow Indonesian waters, but strong underwater currents and rough seas have prevented divers from reaching it.

The jet’s black boxes – the cockpit voice recorder and flight data recorder – were recovered last week, and investigators are analysing them.

Indonesian Transport Minister Ignasius Jonan said this week that the plane climbed abnormally fast before stalling and plunging into the sea.

Just moments before the plane disappeared off the radar, the pilot had asked to climb to avoid a major storm but was not immediately granted permission because of heavy air traffic.