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 The breakthrough came as authorities in Jakarta said that
Indonesia AirAsia was violating the terms of its license for the
Surabaya to Singapore route by flying on a Sunday, the day the
Airbus <AIR.PA> A320-200 plunged into the Java Sea, and said they
would investigate the budget carrier's other schedules.
Search and rescue agency chief Fransiskus Bambang Soelistyo said
underwater remote operating vehicles (ROV) were being used to try to
capture images to confirm the underwater objects were parts of the
lost plane.
"We have detected two objects underwater (at) 30 meters depth," said
Soelistyo. "At this moment we are operating the ROV to take pictures
of the objects."
A multi-national task force of ships, planes and helicopters have
been scouring the northern Java Sea and coastline of southern Borneo
to recover the bodies of victims and locate the wreck of Flight
QZ8501 and its black box flight recorders.
No survivors have been found from the crash, which happened about 40
minutes after the plane took off from Indonesia's second largest
city in an area known for intense tropical thunderstorms during the
current monsoon season.
Air traffic controllers lost contact with Flight QZ8501 minutes
after the pilot requested to fly higher to try and avoid a storm
cell.
Indonesian authorities on Friday questioned whether the pilot had
followed correct weather report procedures, and later suspended
Indonesia AirAsia's Surabaya to Singapore flights for apparently
infringing the terms of its license for the route.
Djoko Murdjatmodjo, acting director general of air transportation,
said on Saturday that the transport ministry would investigate all
AirAsia schedules from Monday.
"We are going to investigate all AirAsia flight schedules. Hopefully
we can start on next Monday. We won't focus on licenses, just
schedules," he said. "It is possible AirAsia's license in Indonesia
might be revoked," he added, stressing that was only one
possibility.
Sunu Widyatmoko, Indonesia AirAsia chief, told reporters the
airline, 49-percent owned by Malaysia-based AirAsia <AIRA.KL>, would
cooperate with the inquiry.
"The government has suspended our flights from Surabaya to Singapore
and back," he said. "They are doing the evaluation process. AirAsia
will cooperate fully with the evaluation."
RECOVERING VICTIMS
Much of the effort has focused on finding victims of the crash.
Officials said 21 bodies were pulled from the sea on Friday,
including two still strapped in their seats, bringing the total
number of victims recovered to 30.
 Small pieces of the aircraft and other debris have also been found,
but there has been no sign of the crucial voice and flight data
recorders - the so-called black boxes that investigators hope will
unravel the sequence of events in the cockpit during the doomed
jet's final minutes. Search and rescue agency chief Soelistyo told a news conference in
Jakarta that two large objects were found just before midnight on
Friday.
The first object measured 9.4 metres by 4.8 metres by 0.4 metres (30
feet by 15 feet by 1.3 feet), while the second is 7.2 metres by 0.5
metres (24 feet by 1.6 feet), he said.
Soelistyo said operating ROVs was problematic due to the large waves
in the area that have hampered operations for much of the week, but
that divers were preparing to search for the objects.
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The cause of the crash, the first suffered by the AirAsia <AIRA.KL>
group since the budget operator began flying in 2002, is
unexplained. The plane was flying at 32,000 ft (9,753 metres) and
the pilot had asked to climb to 38,000 ft just before contact was
lost. When air traffic controllers granted permission to fly at
34,000 ft a few minutes later there was no response.
A source close to the investigation said radar data appeared to show
the aircraft made an "unbelievably" steep climb before it crashed,
possibly pushing it beyond the A320's limits.
LICENSE SUSPENDED
Indonesia's transport ministry said late on Friday that the terms of
Indonesia AirAsia's license for the Surabaya-Singapore
route permitted flights on four days of the week but not Sundays.
"As of Jan. 2, 2015, the license of Surabaya-Singapore (return)
route to Indonesia AirAsia is temporarily frozen until after there
is a result of evaluation and investigation," said spokesman Julius
Adravida Barata.
Hadi Mustofa Djuraid, a transport ministry official, told reporters
on Friday that authorities were also investigating the possibility
that the pilot did not ask for a weather report from the
meteorological agency at the time of take-off.
 Indonesia AirAsia said in a statement that weather reports were
printed in hard copy at the operations control center at all its
flight hubs, including Surabaya, and taken by the pilot to the
aircraft before each flight. An AirAsia spokeswoman declined to comment on whether the pilot had
followed the procedure described in the statement.
The Indonesian captain, a former air force fighter pilot, had 6,100
flying hours on the A320 and the plane last underwent maintenance in
mid-November, according to Indonesia AirAsia.
On board Flight QZ8501 were 155 Indonesians, three South Koreans,
and one person each from Singapore, Malaysia and Britain. The
co-pilot was French.
(Additional reporting by Fergus Jensen in PANGKALAN BUN, Cindy
Silviana, Kanupriya Kapoor, Michael Taylor, Adriana Nina Kusuma,
Charlotte Greenfield, Nilufar Rizki and Nicholas Owen in JAKARTA;
Writing by Alex Richardson; Editing by Michael Perry)
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