Indonesian President Joko Widodo met the grieving families of the victims of AirAsia Flight QZ8501 Tuesday night to pass on his personal condolences.
The president arrived at Juanda international airport in Surabaya to meet relatives of the 162 passengers and crew.
"For the all the passengers’ families, I also feel their loss and we pray the families will be given the fortitude to deal with this tragedy," he said at a press conference in the airport.
As the head of the search and rescue operation said teams would work around the clock to recover bodies, Widodo told reporters the operation was being hampered by fog and rough seas, with waves up to 3 meters tall.
Search teams recovered more than 40 bodies Tuesday as the airline confirmed the debris as belonging to the plane.
An Indonesian Navy spokesman said that 40 bodies had been retrieved from the Karimata Strait between Sumatra and Borneo, near where the missing plane was last recorded, as night fell.
In a statement, AirAsia said Indonesian officials had confirmed that the bodies and debris were from the Airbus 320-200 that went missing on Sunday as it travelled from Surabaya to Singapore.
Chief Executive Tony Fernandes said he was "devastated" and his priority was the victims' families.
Earlier, Indonesia’s acting Director General of Air Transportation Djoko Murjatmodjo was quoted in the Jakarta Post: “It has been confirmed that it is debris from an aircraft bearing red and white colors [AirAsia's livery].”
He added: “The recovery process will now be centered in the debris location in coordination with Basarnas [the National Search and Rescue Agency].”
Fernandes had previously sent his condolences to the relatives of those aboard the flight.
In the statement, he added: Mr Fernandes said: "I am absolutely devastated. This is a very difficult moment for all of us at AirAsia as we await further developments of the search and rescue operations but our first priority now is the wellbeing of the family members of those on board QZ8501."
MetroTV reported search and rescue chiefs as saying bodies and ten pieces of debris, including an emergency door, had been recovered.
The station showed images of one bloated corpse and reported bodies had been pulled aboard an Indonesian navy vessel. None of the bodies had life jackets on.
The wreckage was initially found by a Hercules C-130 search plane at 11.00 local time (05.00 GMT).
The location of the debris matched information from two fishermen in Pangkalan Bun who said that they heard a thud and saw explosions on Sunday morning, search and rescue agency spokesman Yusuf Larif said.
First Lieutenant Tri Wibowo, who was aboard the Hercules, told the Kompas.com news website that he had spotted a body, luggage and a life vest among the debris.
He said: "As we approached, the body seemed bloated."
The discovery - 100 miles (160 kilometers) southwest of Pangkalan Bun town in Central Kalimantan province - came on the third day of the search as officials widened the operation to cover 97,000 square miles (156,000 square km).
The last contact with the flight was at 06.12 Sunday local time (23.12 Saturday GMT) when the pilot requested permission to veer left and climb to 38,000 feet (11,600 meters) to avoid heavy storm clouds.
The pilot was granted permission to change course but not to climb immediately due to another flight on the same path. No distress signal was received before the plane disappeared from radar.
Indonesia has deployed 37 ships and aircraft in the hunt for the airliner, Soelistyo said, while other countries had provided around a dozen naval vessels and aircraft.
The majority of those aboard were Indonesians although the co-pilot was French and the passengers included three South Koreans, a Malaysian and a British national reportedly travelling with his Singaporean daughter.
The loss of AirAsia is the third major air disaster to hit Southeast Asia this year. In March, Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370 went missing en route to Beijing with 239 aboard and four months later Flight MH17 crashed in Ukraine’s Donetsk region near the border with Russia, killing all 298 aboard.
AirAsia had a positive safety record and had not reported any previous disasters.
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