Waves are expected to be 1.5 to 2 meters high, said Bambang Sulistyo, head of Indonesia’s search and rescue agency, at a press conference in Jakarta.
Sulistyo said that if the weather is relatively good, divers will be sent to the location where four objects were detected on sonar.
There are 89 divers on standby and divers from Russia will join the effort, he said.
Search teams have found four large pieces of debris believed to be parts of the aircraft. Sulistyo said the latest objects — including one that is 18 meters (59 feet) long — were located by sonar in the priority search area.
Searchers came upon the metal parts after spotting an oil slick late Friday.
Bad weather conditions — including 15-foot waves and strong underwater currents — prevented divers from conducting searches Saturday, meaning no additional bodies were recovered. Sunday’s forecast called for more favorable conditions, he said.
Who was on the plane
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Indonesian authorities are looking in to why AirAsia was flying that particular route on that particular day; the country’s transport ministry claims that AirAsia was permitted to fly it only on Mondays, Tuesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays. AirAsia said it will cooperate with the inquiry and suspended all service from Surabaya to Singapore in the meantime.
What we don’t know: Did technical problems or human error have anything to do with the crash? A major aviation database registers 54 incidents involving the A320.
Some A320 accidents and incidents involve fan-cowl detachments, landing gear collapse, bird strikes and pilot error, an expert said. These cause disasters only in very rare cases.
Security threat?
Meanwhile, the U.S. Embassy in Jakarta issued a security alert Saturday after being “made aware of a potential threat against U.S.-associated hotels and banks in Surabaya.” A State Department official, however, told CNN that there was “no knowledge of any connection between this threat and the Air Asia flight.”
No additional information was given regarding the nature of the threat, but the Embassy recommended “heightened vigilance and awareness of one’s surroundings when visiting such facilities.”
CNN’s Paula Hancocks, Kevin Bohn and Joseph Netto contributed to this report. Journalist Yosef Riadi and translators Michelle Anugrah, Azieza Uhnavy and Edi Pangerapan also contributed.
