5 January 2015, 09:58 GMT
MOSCOW, January 5 (Sputnik) — An Indonesian Navy ship captain cannot confirm that plane wreckage found in the Java Sea Sunday is linked to the AirAsia flight QZ8501, as DetikNews reports Monday.
"The spot where the aircraft's fuselage is supposedly located was marked by divers yesterday, and currently we are waiting for the possibility to resume exploration and determine if the plane's fuselage is really there," the news outlet stated, citing Arief Budiman, the captain of the Banda Aceh ship.
AirAsia's flight QZ8501, en route from the city of Surabaya to Singapore, lost contact with air traffic control on December 28 after it requested and was denied permission to increase altitude in order to avoid what it identified as dangerous cloud formations.
Earlier on Monday, Indonesia's Transportation Ministry said AirAsia was not authorized to fly the Surabaya-Singapore route on that particular day.
The Airbus A320-200 had 155 passengers on board, mostly Indonesians, and seven crew members. Thirty-four bodies have been recovered and flown to the city of Surabaya. Nine of the 162 people have been identified.
Multinational search operations are underway to find the remaining 128 victims. According to the police chief, a team of 260 Indonesian and foreign experts are working on identifying the bodies.
