About whether wreckage from the plane has been spotted under water. A search official told cnn he believes sonar equipment detected the wreckage at the bottom of the see. But the ceo of airasia says that hasnt been confirmed. Finding the planes black boxes is a top priority. The flight data and cockpit voice recorders are key to figuring out what went wrong here. They contain information on air speed, altitude direction, as well as the conversations and the sounds from the cockpit. Preparations are under way to identify the remains of the Crash Victims once theyve been recovered. Tents have been set up on the grounds of a hospital in surabaya indonesia, and a sign of the grim task ahead, refrigerated containers where the remains will be kept while waiting for identification. Before theyre flown to surabaya the bodies are arriving in borneo. And our Paula Hancocks has the latest from there. Reporter this is the firststop hospital for the victims of the airasia crash on the west coast of borneo. Overnight on wednesday, two more bodies were brought to this hospital. Sirens announced their arrival and red cross and hospital workers were waiting with gurneys for two ambulances. They were then rushed into a special wing thats in this hospital where hospital workers were waiting to treat the bodies and also to carry out the initial identification. What theyll be doing is theyll be trying to look for identifying marks for height gender facial recognition, anything that could tell them who these victims are. The families had been asked to give these kind of details, to give uptodate photos just for this eventuality. The bodies are then prepared and placed in a casket. Then it will be flown to surabaya and for formal identification by the family. The process of retrieving these bodies appears to be very slow in part because of the weather. There has been heavy rain at the site of the crash and in the nearby locations. There has been high waves and also high winds. That makes it very difficult for the divers with little visibility but also for the ships and the aerial support to be able to do their job. The fear at this point is that that bad weather could continue for the next couple of days making what is already an agonizing wait for those families even worse. Paula hancocks cnn, on the west coast of borneo. For more on the efforts to find the rest of the plane and the victims, im joined now by the wall street journals science correspondent andy paster we have cnn analyst david soucie and aviation analyst peter goelz. There are seven bodies that have been found. This is not very many bodies found over the last couple of days of searches. Does it tell you anything or are expecteding more will be found . You would hope they would find more bodies during the next day or two. The only thing this could do if you could identify where these vicks were seated on the plane, where the Flight Attendant what station was she assigned to it might give you some indication of how the plane separated, how the plane broke up. But its really very preliminary. Were in for a little bit of a long haul. You think well find that information out or we may not hear soon . Its going to take finding the black boxes for us to get that information finally. Andy the wall street journal reporting that indonesia said sonar shows the plane was upside down. Why would this be significant . It could be significant depending on the angle of the plane going into the water. But i think it would be good to step back a little bit and talk about the whole system of aviation the dispatchers, the regulators and as sad as it is for the families and to look at what this pilot may have done its important to look at the broader system. Indonesia has a spotty aviation Safety Record over the years. This is the first fatal crash since 2007. But there have been egregious incidents and accidents since this. And one of the questions that people keep asking me and also one of the things that pilots keep telling me is how is it possible that the route of this flight was going directly into such an intense thunderstorm . In the u. S. It would never be done and dispatchers whouf aould have alerted the crew probably to steer away from that thunderstorm long before they ever got close to it. So i think its important to look at the specifics of the crash. But i think it also behooves everybody to take a broader look at what the country has done over the years or not done. And also the system that this airline had in place for safety. David, can you talk a little bit about what andy just said that in the u. S. This plane would have been steered around this . Weve been talking a lot about this about whether there would have been something different. I havent heard a lot of people say that. Theyve said that the pilots really should have been trained to flight in conditions like this. What do you think . Well i believe that hes right on a lot of levels as far as stepping back and taking a look at the regulatory system. Its important to understand though that the Aviation System and the regulatory system worldwide is based on Continuous Improvement. What that means is that there is propensity or theres a possibility of failures within that system. Whats important about our regulatory system is that we learn from those and that we improve. The faa is one of the first regulatory systems. The asian system is one of the last. When i was with the faa in early 2000 the chinese were coming to the United States to learn our regulatory system. We worked with them to come up with what their aviation regulatory system is. Asia is also one of these thats trying to get in there. Indonesia is a little bit more behind malaysia a few things going on there that we could talk about for a long time. But a doctor i interviewed up in montreal said that prior to his regime, the president had gone down to indonesia to try to make sure that they were complying with these standards and practices and the annexes within the system. Its important to remember too, it is a Continuous Improvement program and theyre very good at learning more. But there is room for improvement certainly. Certainly something to and youre nodding as well, peter. Clearly something to be learned from this, as you said, andy. I wonder peter, there are a lot of i guess, criticisms of the Malaysian Airline search from the march crash this year. Do you think because of that you have officials being more cautious about whether the plane has been found . Were hearing these conflicting reports about it. The ceo saying no we havent necessarily found it. I think theres always misinformation as both andy and david will confirm. Theres always misinformation during the early stages of an accident. And were still in the early stages. And you need to be very careful. People want to give good news out. They want to see things that tend to be positive. You have to take it with a grain of salt. You have to be careful. You have to be verify verify the information. And i think andys right. The whole issue of dispatch is a critical one. There were planes taking off before and after this plane that were flying a very similar route. And we need to know whether the dispatch system in that part of the world really takes into account the challenges of the weather. Especially with the growth that were seeing of air travel in that area. Andy, there is new and improved gps technology. This is already out there. It hasnt been implemented. Some say that its because technically its not going to save lives. Its just going to help locate aircraft if they crash. And in the scheme of things, that does happen infrequently. But it would help locate lost planes. Do you think this is a valid argument for why you shouldnt implement it . I dont think so. For example, if there had been survivors in this crash, three days is an unacceptable time for rescue crews to get to them. Thats one point. Secondly i think the industry treated malaysia 370 as a oneoff accident, never happen again, so lets not really spend a lot of time or money. Theyre doing some things but not very much. And i think thats really a backward way of looking at it because in todays world, in todays digital world, first of all, three days is an eternity and neither passengers nor Airline Officials nor regulators should be sitting back and saying, its okay not to find the plane for that long or much longer. And secondly the point is that there is Technology Available at some cost and i think that the average flyer would say its unacceptable to have even one example of malaysia 370, let alone another one. And i would like to make one other very quick point getting back to the history of indonesia. We dont want to beat up on the regulators. I certainly dont. But if you look at their history. There are egregious accidents and incidents not in the longago past but this year and last year of lion aircraft the captain violated all the safety rules trying to land at bali and crashed into the water. Luckily no one was killed. And even this year a lion airplane landed in bali and bounced four times and seriously injured some passengers. So yes, airasia has a good Safety Record has never had a fatal accident. But you cant look at it in isolation. The country has had tremendous problems over the years. They say theyre improving but their accident rate is still twice what the worldwide accident rate is for westernbuilt jets. And i think that has to be part of this investigation if were going to be serious about finding out what happened and why it happened. It is very key, as you say. Andy pasztor, peter goelz, david soucie thank you. Crews continue to work at the crash site. For those working at the scene, theyre not really trying to recover victims but gather crews that will explain what caused this tragedy. And well also get the latest on weather conditions there at the site that theyre dealing with. We also want to hear from you. Please tweet us. Use 8501qs on twitter. Well have our experts here to answer your questions. And later, whats being done to make sure the 1 Million People expected to gather in times square for new years eve will be able to celebrate safely . Big waves, strong winds, heavy rain this is what crews are battling as they try to recover more victims from the crash of airasia flight 8501. Chad myers joining us now from the cnn weather center. This is very important, this search. You have both on ships searching. You have planes searching. The Aerial Search was suspended today because of the bad weather. What are the conditions going to be like in the hours and days ahead . Rain clouds and wind of 30. I know that sounds bad. But the model run that just expired and we got a new one said rain, clouds, wind to 50. So somehow were going in the right direction but still a wave at 15 20 feet high doesnt help find pieces of an airplane in the water. It gets too mixed up. Were actually in pretty good shape. The problem is, its dark. So not many crews out there. You dont have Aerial Searches in the dark. And even though this is the best weather weve had all day. By morning, we have more weather moving back in. Thats the kind of diurnal pattern we have here. In the morning, cloudy and stormy. By late afternoon, it goes away. By night, its great. Thats the problem with this search and we talked to a couple of researchers earlier that said if this is the case for the next few days we need to start doing the underwater search during the night when its calm doesnt matter whether its day or night down there. Its all dark down there anyway. But the water is turbulent, visibility isnt that good. The rainfall rate is going to be about 4 inches the next two days a lot of cloud cover, a lot of rain. When the clouds come down, the planes cant fly high enough. This is the only real positive story to my map today. We are over here in a 25, 30mileperhour range. Earlier today, the models were saying 55 Miles Per Hour. And thats just an unusable sea state. You cant get boats, ships, anything in there. Even if you found something, you cant retrieve it because the waves are so big. Were Getting Better. Looks like by saturday there may be a real big break in this action. But this is the itcz where we expect storms this time of year. And they are. Air comes together at the surface, it goes up and you get thunderstorms. If we didnt have thunderstorms, probably wouldnt be talking because the thunderstorms likely had something to do with this plane. Yes definitely. And this weather, this tricky weather, does it do anything to the debris . Theres obviously still a lot of objects, we would imagine, out there waiting to be discovered. Are they getting scattered farther afield . Absolutely. And there are some objects that are sticking up 4, 6 inches out of the water. Some may be higher. The higher theyre sticking up out of the water, the farther they get blown by these winds. If theyre slightly below the surface, they dont move very much at all. And if its a black box and goes into the ground into the silt down there, its not going to move. Youll see a scaling of how far the top layer moves, the middle layer debris moves and the bottom layer doesnt move very much at all. This is the box area weve been watching. It wouldnt surprise me just like mh370 when they moved the search areas around that we begin to look more up in the northwest. Right now, looking above the surface, thats where the wind pushed all that debris. And you could see some of it even coming onshore in the weeks ahead here. Chad myers, thank you. Later, we are going to get an update on how victims families are coping in surabaya indonesia, where 8501 took off on saturday. Next well be taking you live to times square for a look at how police and Security Officials are getting ready for one of the biggest public gatherings of the year. New york city is getting ready to ring in 2015. But it will happen under intense security. Heavily armed counterterrorism teams, bombsniffing dogs rooftop patrols, helicopters, all of this part of the security plan to keep the expected 1 million big apple revellers safe. But this year brings some mounted headaches. The potential for demonstrations against the nypd and the recent targeting of Police Officers. Rosa flores is live from times square for us. Are you seeing this security rosa . Is it more noticeable this year . Reporter brianna, the biggest takeaway is that although revellers are going to be here about 1 million of them they will not be able to notice the changes in security. Take a look behind me. You see a lot of the revellers already here. You can see some Police Officers as well of the nypd. But the nypd does tell us that they do plan to beef up security. So why . Well its because of the increased number of threats that have come in through social media. All this after two Police Officers were ambushed and killed here in new york city. So theyre going to be monitoring social media heavily. There will be more eyes and ears here in times square like you mentioned. Theyre going to have eyes in the sky as well helicopters hovering overhead to make sure that everything is secure. The other thing that theyre also keeping an eye on is protests. Why . Because protests have been erupting in this city since those two Police Officers were killed. So theres a specific detail that will be on standby and that can be activated at a moments notice. But, again, brianna, the biggest takeaway here is people from around the world are going to be here in times square watching on television and theyre not going to notice anything different. The scene is going to be the same. The experience of the ringing in of the new year will be the same. Brianna . Rosa flores in times square for us thank you. As you get ready to celebrate the new year, others have already started. This is sydney australia. Lets take a picture there. Beautiful, spectacular fireworks display over the harbor. Happy new year to my relatives there in sydney. And you might be able to make out, that opera house there, there it is to the left, gorgeous in the lower left corner. 1. 5 Million People crowding the harbor to watch this gorgeous show. And not to be outdone, auckland new zealand, began its celebration on the tallest manmade structure in new zealand. And we have some pictures from pyongyang, north korea. The usually reclusive country threw this big celebration at midnight. By tradition, north korea welcomes the new year by ringing the pyongyang bell. And in beijing, more fireworks, also a laser light show, of course. Pretty amazing, welcoming 2015 in. You may recognize the iconic olympic venue known as the birds nest. We will end on these happy faces of children there in china, happy 2015 wherever you are. And certainly do not miss Anderson Cooper and Kathy Griffin anchoring cnns new years eve special live from times square at 9 00 eastern tonight. Ill be watching because you never know whats going to happen. Its always a lot of fun. Still ahead, if you have some questions for us about the airasia air crash, please share them on twitter at 8501qs. Next well get a live update on family members who are waiting to hear more from those in charge of this crash investigation. Ive smoked a lot and quit a lot but ended up nowhere. Now. I use this. The nicoderm cq patch with unique extended release Technology Helps prevent the urge to smoke all day. I want this time to be my last time. Thats why i choose nicoderm cq. Welcome back to our viewers in the United States and around the world. Im Brooke Anderson reporting from washington. Its almost impossible to imagine the agony for relatives of those on board airasia air flight 8501. The agonizing wait for crews to recover the bodies of their loved ones. Cnns Andrew Stevens is at the airport in surabaya, indonesia. Youve been covering this from the beginning. Youve seen the grief that family members are going through. Are they getting all of the answers that they need . Are they being kept updated in a timely manner . Reporter theyve being kept updated as much as they can be. But it is an anguished wait for them because at the moment, the weather conditions are so bad that they cant actually continue to bring bodies