A tragic mum’s final Instagram post after she boarded a doomed plane in Indonesia featured two laughing children and two emojis blowing kisses.

Ratih Windania posted the image just before she got on the Boeing 737 at Jakarta airport which crashed into the sea minutes after take-off.

The internal flight had 62 passengers and crew when it crashed on Saturday.

Alongside the image it was captioned: “Bye bye family. We’re heading home for now.”

Ratih’s brother Irfansyah Riyanto posted a picture of the family on Instagram saying: “Pray for us.”

Indonesian authorities said they had recovered pieces of wreckage and body parts on Sunday from the waters north of the capital where Sriwijaya Air Flight SJ 182 disappeared in rainy weather.

Photos show rescue workers pulling debris from the water in a desperate search for survivors.

Residents of Thousand Island said they heard two explosions before finding items in the sea.

Surachman, a local government official, told Kompas TV that fishermen found what appeared to be the wreckage of an aircraft in waters north of Jakarta and a search was underway.

“We found some cables, a piece of jeans, and pieces of metal on the water,” Zulkifli, a security official, told CNNIndonesia.com.

Like dozens of other desperate relatives, Irfansyah rushed to Jakarta’s Soekarno Hatta airport late on Saturday after hearing the news.

On Sunday, he was still hoping for good news about his sister and four other family members on the flight, including his parents.

Irfansyah said: “We feel powerless, we can only wait and hope to have any information soon.”

He said his relatives had originally been due to take an earlier flight operated by Sriwijaya’s unit NAM Air and he was unclear why that was changed.

His sister and her two children had been at the end of a three-week holiday and were taking the 740 km (460 mile) trip home to Pontianak on the island of West Kalimantan.

“I was the one who drove them to the airport, helped with the check-ins and the luggage … I feel like I still can’t believe this and it happened too fast,” Irfansyah said.

The flight disappeared from radar screens minutes after the plane took off and reached an altitude of 10,900 feet.

Indonesian authorities said on Sunday they had tracked signals likely from the plane’s black boxes.

Police have asked families to provide information to help identify any bodies retrieved such as dental records and DNA samples.

At the police hospital, the brother of co-pilot Diego Mamahit said he had been asked for a blood sample.

Chris Mamahit said.: “I believe my younger brother survived, these are just for the police procedure.

“Diego is a good man, we still believe Diego survived.”

On his LinkedIn profile, Chris had written “I really love to fly.”

He and pilot Afwan, who goes by only one name, have nearly two decades of commercial flying experience between them.

A relative of Afwan, who had previously been an air force pilot, told Detik.com: “We the family still hope for good news.”

Indonesian President Joko Widodo offered sympathy on Sunday.

He said: “We are making our best efforts to find and rescue the victims and we all pray that they can be found.”

Panca Widiya Nursanti, a teacher in Pontianak, was on the flight as she was returning after a vacation in her home town of Tegal in Central Java. In Pontianak.

“I was joking by saying that when she arrived in Pontianak we would eat satay together,” he said.

“She contacted me via Whatsapp at 2.05 p.m with laughter. She was already boarding the plane and she said the weather conditions were not good. I said pray a lot, please.”