( CNN ) The majority of AirAsia Flight QZ8501 's fuselage has been found in the Java Sea , Indonesian authorities said Wednesday , 17 days after the airliner carrying 162 people went down . Officials have said the fuselage , or the main part of the plane , might contain many of the bodies of those who were aboard the flight . Authorities do n't yet know why the plane crashed into the sea December 28 while en route to Singapore from the Indonesian city of Surabaya . Roughly 35 minutes into the flight , the pilot asked air traffic control for permission to turn left and climb to avoid bad weather . Minutes later , the plane disappeared from air traffic control 's radar , Indonesian officials say . Now that the fuselage has been found , here are some of the tasks that are ahead for searchers and authorities : . The fuselage discovery adds to the significant finds elsewhere in the Java Sea . Authorities earlier this week recovered the plane 's cockpit voice and flight data recorders -- which will help investigators determine what happened to the flight -- and lifted the tail section of the craft from the sea on Saturday . The priority now is to locate bodies , and divers are expected to search the fuselage Thursday morning , Indonesia search and rescue chief Bambang Soelistyo told reporters Wednesday . As of Wednesday night , 50 bodies had been recovered elsewhere , some still strapped into their seats , officials said . Many of the more than 100 remaining bodies might be found in or near the plane 's fuselage . It was n't clear Wednesday whether the cockpit is attached . Soelistyo did n't reveal the fuselage 's depth . But officials have said other debris , such as the recorders -- which were found about a half-mile from the fuselage on Monday and Tuesday -- were generally discovered at a depth of roughly 30 meters ( 100 feet ) . If divers have trouble accessing the bodies , officials may decide to `` lift the fuselage out of the water , '' Soelistyo said . It was n't immediately clear how that would be done . To recover the tail section on Saturday , crews inflated giant balloons underneath , lifting it from the bottom of the sea . A crane then lifted the tail onto a ship . Both the flight data recorder and the cockpit flight recorder are expected to help investigators understand what went wrong . The flight data recorder , which stores a vast amount of information about the aircraft 's performance including air speed and cabin pressure , tells investigators what happened on a plane . But the cockpit voice recorder tells them why , said Mardjono Siswosuwarno , a senior official at Indonesia 's National Transportation Safety Committee , which is leading the investigation into the disaster . `` The 'why ' is mostly in there , '' he said of the voice recorder , which captures conversations between pilots as well as other sounds in the cockpit . Investigators say they have successfully downloaded the contents of both devices . But Mardjono cautioned that interpreting the information will require a lot of time . Mardjono said he expected a preliminary report to be released within a month of the crash . But it 's unclear how much information the initial document will contain beyond what 's already been made public . The final report containing investigators ' full conclusions will take months , Mardjono said . His agency 's final report into Adam Air Flight 574 -- which crashed in Indonesian waters on New Year 's Day 2007 , killing all 102 people on board -- came out more than a year after that disaster . Meanwhile , Mary Schiavo , a former inspector general of the U.S. Department of Transportation , told CNN that because the recorders ' data had been downloaded , investigators should have `` a pretty good idea within a couple of days '' of what happened aboard the plane . But Schiavo added that she did n't think officials would release any information publicly for a couple of weeks . French aviation experts are helping the Indonesian investigation , which also expected to involve Airbus , the manufacturer of the downed A320-200 . Observers have suggested that the locations of the different parts of debris indicate the plane broke apart when it hit the water , not when it was still at a high altitude . AirAsia has said it will pay about $ 124,000 to the families of each victim -- $ 100,000 mandated by Indonesia 's Transport Ministry 's regulations , and $ 24,000 for what the airline called `` financial hardships '' relating to the initial search period . That is below the amount guaranteed by the Montreal Convention , a treaty that governs compensation for the families of air disaster victims . But Indonesia did not sign the treaty . Families may be able to pursue larger claims through courts , CNNMoney reported . It could be some time before the families to receive AirAsia 's payments . In the case of Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 , which vanished in March , families received some initial payments but final amounts have n't been settled , according to CNNMoney . CNN 's Jethro Mullen , Kocha Olarn , Elizabeth Joseph , Andrew Stevens , Mitra Mobasherat , Gary Tuchman , Brian Walker , Catherine E. Shoichet , Josh Levs and Deborah E. Bloom , CNNMoney 's Virginia Harrison , and journalist Rudy Madanir contributed to this report .
Divers are expected to inspect the fuselage Thursday morning . Data from cockpit voice and flight data recorder have been downloaded . A preliminary report will be issued within hours , Indonesian authorities says .