Passenger selfie last known pic from Flight 8501

For the family of AirAsia Flight 8501 passenger Hendra Gunawan Syawal, a selfie taken as he and three friends prepared to take off from Surabaya will be a reminder of a lost loved one, and for the rest of the world it may remain the last image to show faces on board the doomed jet.

Syawal, a 23-year-old Indonesian man, was one of 162 people to die when Flight 8501 crashed into the Java Sea during a storm on Dec. 28.

His body was one of about 40 recovered from the water as of Monday, and his sister told "The Times" of London that his new haircut -- a buzzcut easily seen in the selfie -- helped her identify his remains at an operations center in Surabaya over the weekend.

Yunita Syawal told The Times that in spite of being in regular contact with brother, she didn't know he was planning to travel to Singapore and was only made aware when someone forwarded her the picture of him on the plane with his friends.

"I immediately flew to Surabaya," she told the British newspaper. There, after a six-day wait for news, Yunita was asked -- like 37 other family members thus far -- to verify her loved one's identity as he lay in a plain wooden coffin.

"Even after days, we still kept thinking he's alive, but now that we have seen his body, we know he's gone for sure," she told The Times.

Bad weather has hampered the search for victims of the air disaster, but CBS News' Allen Pizzey reported Monday that a break in the storms was enabling ships to continue scanning the seafloor with sonar devices. As many as five large objects have been detected on the seafloor -- suspected pieces of the fuselage -- and at least one body has been removed from the wreckage itself.

Pizzey reported that a search ship's captain claimed Monday to have located the tail portion of the aircraft, where the all-important "black boxes" are located, but there was no confirmation of his claim.

The bodies of most of the victims of the crash are still believed to be trapped inside the plane's wreckage on the seafloor.

"I am glad that my brother's body has been found, but I really hope the other passengers can be found as soon as possible. We all need closure," said Yunita.