INDONESIA’S Transport Ministry has ordered a review of all low-cost airlines in the country and suspended staff linked to the Lion Air flight that crashed on Monday killing the 189 people aboard.

As the grim task of recovering bodies, personal items and wreckage continued yesterday, authorities said they believed they had found the fuselage of the Boeing 737 that crashed in about 35m of water 15km off the coast just minutes after leaving Jakarta Airport.

Indonesia’s navy said a 22m long object suspected to be part of the crashed jet was located at a depth of 32m in seas north-east of Jakarta.

Late yesterday, Indonesia’s Transport Minister said the technical director of Lion Air and staff who approved Monday’s flight had been removed from duty by the ministry.

Transport Minister Budi Karya Sumadi said the airline would be subjected to a ministry inspection and operations of all low-cost airlines in Indonesia would be reviewed.

Inspections have already been carried out on Lion Air’s other Boeing 737 MAX 8 planes, preventing them from flying.

Debris, personal items, including 52 identification cards and passports, and body parts were found offshore yesterday.

Investigators will focus on a problem with the plane’s rear elevator and issues it had on its previous flight.

The disaster has reignited concerns about safety in Indonesia’s fast-growing aviation industry, which was recently removed from European Union and US blacklists, and also raised doubts about the safety of Boeing’s new generation 737 MAX 8 plane.

Boeing experts were due to arrive in Indonesia yesterday and Lion Air has said an “intense” internal investigation was under way in addition to the probe by safety regulators.

Locating the fuselage will bring the search effort closer to finding the plane’s flight recorders, which are crucial to the accident investigation.

According to Australian aircraft engineers, the 737’s tech log had a record of an issue with “elevator feel and control” on the last flight the day before the tragedy.

Any serious issue with the rear elevator would account for the crash into the sea at about 560km/h. It is known the Lion Air 737 had control problems relating to erratic speed and altitude the day before, similar to those seen just after the fatal flight took off.

Lion Air said the plane had a “technical problem” on the previous flight, which was “resolved according to the procedure”.

Video of passengers boarding the flight has been broadcast on Indonesian TV. At one point, the passenger who shot the video, Paul Ferdinand Ayorbaba, zooms in on his boarding pass.

His wife Ningsy Ayorbaba, interviewed at a Jakarta police hospital where she had taken her three children for DNA tests to help with victim identification, said: “My husband sent that video.

“It was his last message to me.”

The Australian Government has eased a ban on staff and contractors flying Lion Air and subsidiaries Batik Air and Wings Air.

An advisory yesterday said the ban related to Lion Air and subsidiaries that operate outside Australia.

Batik Air operates flights from Perth to Bali and is now not covered by the ban.

with agencies