An excessively rapid ascent is likely to cause an airplane to go into an aerodynamic stall. In 2009, an Air France Airbus A330 disappeared over the Atlantic Ocean in bad weather while flying from Rio de Janeiro to Paris. Investigators were able to determine from the jet's "black boxes" that it began a steep climb and then went into a stall from which the pilots were unable to recover.

Airbus spokesman Justin Dubon said Tuesday that it was too early to comment on possible similarities between the two crashes.

Survey ships have located at least nine big objects, including the AirAsia jet's fuselage and tail, in the Java Sea. The plane's black boxes - the cockpit voice recorder and flight data recorder - have been recovered but are still being analyzed.

"So far, we've managed to download and transcribe half of the cockpit voice recorder," said Nurcahyo Utomo, a commissioner with the National Transportation Safety Committee. "It is too early to draw any conclusion yet because we don't know what is in the remaining half."

He said there was no indication of terrorism, and there were no other voices in the cockpit other than the pilot and co-pilot.

The plane was en route from Surabaya, Indonesia's second-largest city, to Singapore.

Only 53 bodies have been recovered so far. Rough sea conditions have repeatedly prevented divers from reaching the wreckage.