Divers on Thursday descended to the main body of an AirAsia jet that crashed last month, hoping to recover most of the disaster's victims, a day after it was finally located by a navy ship.

Flight QZ8501 went down on Dec 28 in stormy weather during a short trip from the Indonesian city of Surabaya to Singapore, with 162 people on board.

After a lengthy search often hampered by bad weather, a Singapore military vessel spotted the fuselage - the plane's main body, believed to be the resting place of most of the victims - at the bottom of the Java Sea on Wednesday.