Debris from AirAsia Flight 8501 was discovered along with at least two bodies on Tuesday, confirming the plane missing since Sunday had crashed, CNN reported.

Officials acknowledged the aircraft pieces found in Indonesian waters belonged to the low cost carrier's Airbus A320, which had been carrying 155 passengers and seven crew members on a flight from Surabaya, Indonesia, to Singapore, USA Today reported.

AirAsia said in a statement Indonesia's National Search and Rescue Agency located the debris in the Karimata Strait between Sumatra, Java and Borneo, a large island shared among Indonesia, Malaysia and Brunei.

Search and rescue operations are ongoing, and teams were diverting all their resources. Divers and ships with sonar equipment were being sent to the site, where the water depth can be 80-100 feet, said Bambang Sulistyo, the head of Indonesia's search and rescue agency.

AirAsia, meanwhile, issued a statement extending its "sincere sympathies to the family and friends of those on board QZ8501."

"Our sympathies also go out to the families of our dear colleagues," said the carrier's CEO, Sunu Widyatmoko.

Dozens of planes, helicopters and ships had been looking for the missing aircraft, The Associated Press noted. On Tuesday, searchers discovered what appeared to be a life jacket and an emergency exit door. They brought off the plane's interior, including an oxygen tank, to the nearest town, Pangkalan Bun.

The bodies and wreckage were found about 160 kilometres from land, First Adm. Sigit Setiayanta said. The Naval Aviation Center commander at Surabaya Air Force reported six corpses were spotted off Borneo Island, about 16 kilometres from the plane's last known coordinates.

New documents, meanwhile, show the crash may have been caused by a crucial two-minute delay in letting its pilot climb to a higher altitude, the New York Post reported.

A transcript of the final communication between the captain and air-traffic control revealed that AirAsia Flight 8501 had asked to climb to avoid a storm; air-traffic controllers did not immediately approve the request because the airspace above the Airbus was crowded with other flights.