Divers were sent to the location and plunged into the waves. Down on the sea floor, they were able to take pictures of the wreckage.
Finding the tail section is a potentially vital step in the investigation because that is where the flight data and voice recorders — the so-called black boxes — are located in the Airbus A320-200, the aircraft model of Flight QZ8501.
“The cockpit voice recorder and flight data recorder are absolutely crucial to gaining an understanding of what happened to this aircraft,” said Greg Waldron, the managing editor of Flightglobal, an aviation industry website.
Are the black boxes there?
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Many family members of the people on board the plane have been waiting in Surabaya for news of their loved ones. Of the 40 bodies discovered, 16 have been identified publicly.
The vast majority of the people on the plane were Indonesian. There were also citizens of Britain, France, Malaysia, Singapore and South Korea.
The airline said Wednesday that it will offer family members roughly $100,000 in compensation per passenger. The amount is in addition to $24,000 offered to families to help with immediate financial hardship.
Journalist Intan Hadidjah and translator Edi Pangerapan contributed to this report.
