Divers and an unmanned underwater vehicle spotted the tail of crashed AirAsia flight QZ8501 in the Java Sea.

This is the first confirmed sighting of any major wreckage 11 days after flight 8501 disappeared with 162 people on board, an official said.

Despite powerful currents and murky water that hindered the operation, searchers managed to get a photograph of the debris after it was detected by an Indonesian survey ship, National Search and Rescue chief Henry Bambang Soelistyo said. One released image appears to show an upside down "A'' painted on a piece of metal.

The find is important because the all-important cockpit voice and flight data recorders, or black boxes, are located in the aircraft's tail.

Smaller pieces of the plane, such as seats and an emergency door, had previously been collected from the surface.

"Today we successfully discovered the part of the plane that became the main aim since yesterday," Soelistyo said. "I can ensure that this is part of the tail with the AirAsia mark on it."

He stressed the top priority remains recovering more bodies along with the black boxes. So far, 40 corpses have been found, including an additional one announced on Wednesday.

At two weeks, most corpses will sink, said Anton Castilani, head of the country's disaster identification victim unit, and there are already signs of serious decomposition. Officials are hopeful many of the more than 120 bodies still unaccounted for will be found entombed in the fuselage.

Culled from bbc