Indonesian divers began an operation to raise the wreckage of AirAsia Flight QZ8501 on Saturday.
The teams are trying to float the main fuselage using balloons, said Marshall Supriyadi, director of operations and training for Indonesia’s search and rescue agency, but have been unsuccessful so far.
The operation hit a snag when a belt attaching a lifting bag, or balloon, to the fuselage broke.
Divers successfully carried out the same procedure with the tail section of the aircraft earlier this month.
The aircraft went down on December 28 as it flew from the Indonesian city of Surabaya toward Singapore with 162 people on board.
Four more bodies were recovered Saturday, taking the total found to 69.
Many of the rest could be in the wreckage of the fuselage, which searchers located 10 days ago at the bottom of the sea. Efforts to examine and get inside the wreckage have been hindered by high waves and strong currents.
A top Indonesian official said Tuesday that the aircraft had climbed rapidly, and then stalled, shortly before it crashed.
Experts have speculated since Day One that storms might have played a role in the plane crash.
Amid increasingly bad weather, one of the pilots had requested to deviate from the plane’s planned route, AirAsia has said.
The analysis of the data recorders for the preliminary report on the crash is now 90% complete, according to National Transportation Safety Committee investigator Nurcahyo Utomo.
Utomo, an expert in “black box” analysis, said he had already listened to the pilot and co-pilot’s conversation from the cockpit voice recorder. His team has also already “read” all of the data recorded in flight, including aircraft speed and altitude, he said.