Update | Seven more bodies recovered as French black box team searches for AirAsia plane

Seven more bodies were recovered today as specialist teams continued to search for the wreckage of AirAsia flight QZ8501, which disappeared on Sunday carrying 162 passengers and crew. It brings the total confirmed dead to 16, according to Associated Press. A helicopter from the USS Sampson brought the corpses to Pangkalan Bun, the town nearest to the site off Borneo. They were unloaded and driven off in ambulances. Rescuers hope the fuselage - if intact - will contain the remains of many of the nearly 150 passengers and crew still missing. The wreckage will be key to explaining what might have caused flight QZ8501 to go down. A specialist black box search team sent by the French crash investigation agency arrived earlier on Friday after heavy seas forced divers to halt their search the day before. France’s BEA crash investigation agency assists in the case of any air crash involving an Airbus aircraft because the company is based in that country. "During the morning of January 2, local time, a ship will be taking the investigators to the search area, with detection equipment including hydrophones [underwater acoustic detection devices], in order to try to locate the acoustic beacons from the two flight recorders," BEA said in a statement. Search and rescue official Supriadi, who like many Indonesians uses just one name, said it was raining at the suspected crash site on Friday morning, with waves 3-4 metres high and wind speeds of 30-40 knots. Despite the difficult conditions, rescuers recovered seven more bodies at the scene. The search for the AirAsia jet is unlikely to be as technologically challenging as the two-year search for an Air France jet that crashed into deep Atlantic waters in 2009 or the so far fruitless search for Malaysian Flight 370 which disappeared last year. Given that Flight QZ8501 crashed in shallow seas, experts say finding the boxes should not be difficult if the beacons, with a range of 2,000 to 3,000 metres, are working. More ships arrived on Friday with sensitive equipment to hunt for the plane’s fuselage. “We will focus on underwater detection,” said Indonesia’s Search and Rescue Agency chief Henry Bambang Soelistyo. He added that ships from Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore and the US had been on the scene since before dawn on Friday to try to pinpoint wreckage and the all-important flight data and cockpit voice recorders. The data recorder contains crucial information such as engine temperature, vertical and horizontal speed and hundreds of other measurements. The voice recorder captures conversations between pilots and other sounds coming from the cockpit. Tatang Kurniadi, the head of Indonesia’s National Committee for Transportation Safety, said late on Thursday rescuers would use five ping locators – two from Indonesia, two from Singapore and one from Britain – once bad weather had eased and the waters had calmed as expected within five days. Officials earlier said it may take as much as a week to find the black boxes, which investigators hope will reveal the sequence of events in the cockpit and in the heavily computerised jet’s systems. The bodies were brought in numbered coffins to Surabaya where relatives have gathered for identification. AirAsia Indonesia’s CEO Sunu Widyatmoko was seen weeping when authorities handed over the body of the first victim, Hayati Luthfiah Hamid, to family members at a Surabaya hospital. Hamid, 49, was buried on Thursday before sundown in the suburb of Desa Sawotratap, a few kilometres from the city, at an Islamic ceremony attended by relatives and neighbours. Three members of her family were also on board the plane. "Their house has been in a panic since Sunday," Umaroyah, a neighbour, said. "Everyone in the neighbourhood knows someone who was on that plane." Searches on Thursday spanned an area of 13,500 square kilometres involving 19 ships, four helicopters and five planes, said Fransiskus Bambang Soelistyo, head of Indonesia’s Search and Rescue Agency. A search and rescue pilot has spotted a large shadow in the sea, which rescuers believe may be the wreckage, but they have made clear the sighting is not yet confirmed. "Until now, there hasn’t been a confirmed finding or sonar image of the plane body under water," Soelistyo said. Forty-seven divers were on standby to investigate. "I am hoping that the latest information is correct and aircraft has been found," airline boss Tony Fernandes tweeted on Thursday. "Please all hope together. This is so important." Toos Sanitiyoso, an air safety investigator with the National Committee for Transportation Safety, said it could take a week to find the black box. Committee head Kurniadi said the focus of the search, once the waters had calmed as expected, was around the shadow. "We are backtracking from where the wreckage was found to where the plane had its last reading and that is the focus of our search," Kurniadi said. "The depth around here is 50 metres. No specialist equipment [is required]. Divers can go get it." Investigators are working on a theory that the plane stalled as it climbed steeply to avoid a storm about 40 minutes into the flight. "What is most difficult is finding the location where the plane fell - checking whether the aircraft is really there," frogman commander Lieutenant Edi Tirkayasa told reporters. "With weather like this, who knows? We are still hopeful and optimistic that they’ll find it. They must." So far, as well as the bodies, debris including a suitcase, an emergency slide and a life jacket have been recovered from waters near the suspected crash site. No survivors have been found. All but seven of those on board were Indonesians. Authorities have been collecting DNA from relatives to help identify the bodies. "We are asking universities to work with us - from the whole country," said Anton Castilani, executive director at Indonesia’s disaster victims identification committee. Relatives, many of whom collapsed in grief when they saw the first television pictures confirming their fears on Tuesday, held prayers at a crisis centre at Surabaya airport. The plane was travelling at 32,000 feet (9,753 metres) and had asked to fly at 38,000 feet to avoid bad weather. When air traffic controllers granted permission for a rise to 34,000 feet a few minutes later, they received no response. A source close to the investigation said radar data appeared to show that the aircraft made an "unbelievably" steep climb before it crashed. "It appears to be beyond the performance envelope of the aircraft," he said, noting that more information was needed to come to a firm conclusion. Online discussion among pilots has centred on unconfirmed secondary radar data from Malaysia that suggested the aircraft was climbing at a speed of 353 knots, about 100 knots too slow, and that it might have stalled. The Indonesian captain, a former air force fighter pilot, had 6,100 flying hours under his belt and the plane last underwent maintenance in mid-November, according to AirAsia Indonesia, which is 49-percent owned by Malaysia-based budget carrier AirAsia. Three airline disasters involving Malaysian-affiliated carriers in less than a year have dented confidence in the country’s aviation industry. Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370 disappeared in March en route to Beijing from Kuala Lumpur and has not been found. On July 17, the same airline’s Flight MH17 was shot down over Ukraine. The AirAsia group, including affiliates in Thailand, the Philippines and India, had not suffered a crash since its Malaysian budget operations began in 2002. Separately, an AirAsia Indonesia pilot was taken off flying duties on the route from Jakarta to the holiday island of Bali on Thursday after a urine test indicated traces of morphine. The airline said he had been taking medication following an illness.