A team of navy divers has retrieved the flight data recorder from the AirAsia plane which crashed in the Java Sea, killing 162 people.

Salvage experts earlier discovered the black box beneath debris from the main section of the plane, but were unable to recover it.

The head of the search and rescue agency, Fransiskus Bambang Soelistyo, said divers have now "succeeded in lifting" the black box from the sea floor.

"This morning I had an official report from the national transportation safety committee," he told a news conference.

"At 7:11am (local time) we had succeeded in lifting the part of the black box known as the flight data recorder."

The search operation has yet to find the plane's cockpit voice recorder.

AirAsia flight 8501 came down on route from Surabaya in Indonesia to Singapore a fortnight ago with 162 people on board.

On Saturday, a section of the plane's tail section was pulled from the sea, raising hopes that the black box would be found soon. Electronic signals, called pings, had also been heard.

There are normally two in-flight data recorders - one that holds flight data and one that records the voices of those in the cockpit. Both are usually housed in the tail of an Airbus A320-200.

More pings have reportedly been heard in two different locations in the preceding 24 hours since the tail fin was removed from the water.

Indroyono Soesilo, coordinating minister for maritime affairs, said they were located around two miles from where the aircraft's tail was discovered.

"The two are close to each other, just about 20 metres," Mr Soesilo told reporters. "Hopefully, they are the cockpit voice recorder and flight data recorder."

Three more bodies were found on Friday on the seabed, still strapped into their seats.

Two of them were South Koreans travelling with a baby. Their baby has not yet been found, but the infant's carrier was still attached to the man when he was discovered.