Indonesia’s air force was searching for an AirAsia plane carrying 162 people that went missing on Sunday after the pilots asked to change course to avoid bad weather during a flight from the Indonesian city of Surabaya to Singapore.
Indonesia AirAsia Flight QZ8501, an Airbus 320-200, lost contact with Jakarta air traffic control at 6:17 a.m. local time, officials said. Contact was lost about 42 minutes after takeoff.
An AirAsia Airbus A320 takes off in June. An AirAsia flight from the Indonesian city of Surabaya to Singapore lost contact with air traffic control on Sunday. (Manjunath Kiran/AFP/Getty Images)
“The aircraft was on the submitted flight plan route and was requesting deviation due to en route weather before communication with the aircraft was lost,” the airline said in a statement.
No distress signal had been sent, said Joko Muryo Atmodjo, air transportation director at Indonesia’s transport ministry.
After an all-day search for the jetliner, Indonesian officials put the search on hold for the night and said it would resume in the morning.
Indonesia AirAsia said there were 155 passengers and seven crew on board. It said 156 were Indonesian, with three from South Korea and one each from Singapore, Malaysia and France.
Singapore, Malaysia and Australia had offered to help in the search. Malaysia said it was sending vessels and a C130 aircraft while Singapore had also sent a C130, officials said.
Relatives of the passengers of AirAsia flight QZ8501 comfort each other at Juanda International Airport in Surabaya, Indonesia, Sunday, Dec. 28, 2014. (Trisnadi/Associated Press)
Indonesia AirAsia is 49 per cent owned by Malaysia-based budget carrier AirAsia, with local investors holding the rest. The AirAsia group, including affiliates in Thailand, the Philippines and India, has not had a crash since its Malaysian budget operations began in 2002.
Flight QZ8501 was between the Indonesian port of Tanjung Pandan and the town of Pontianak, in West Kalimantan province on Borneo island, when it went missing, Atmodjo told a news conference in Jakarta.
The aircraft had been flying at 32,000 feet and had asked to fly at 38,000 feet to avoid clouds, he added.
Tanjung Pandan is the main town on Belitung island, roughly half way between Surabaya and Singapore. There was bad weather over the island at the time.
Thunderstorms on radar
U.K. aviation analyst Julian Bray told The Associated Press the weather radar showed thunderstorms.
Family members of passengers on AirAsia Flight QZ8501 search a list of names as they await news of their loves ones at Juanda Airport in Indonesia. (Suryanto/Antara Foto/Reuters)
Kim MacDonald of the Weather Network told CBC there were bands of heavy thunderstorms along the flight path and lightning was detected in the area.
The flying time from Surabaya to Singapore is usually just over two hours. The plane had been due in Singapore at 8:30 a.m. Singapore time.
In both Surabaya and Singapore, anxious relatives of people on the plane awaited news.
“I should have been on the flight together with my friends,” a man named Purnomo told TVOne in Surabaya.
“We, seven people, had planned to go to Singapore for vacation but this morning I had an emergency. I had my passport in hand but had to cancel the trip.”
An Indonesian woman at Singapore’s Changi Airport said her sister and other family members, including two children, were on board.
“No one has told us anything. We heard the news and came to the airport,” the woman said before entering a cordoned-off area.
Experience in the cockpit
The airline said the captain and first officer were both experienced.
Tony Fernandes, chief of Malaysia’s AirAsia, said he was heading to Surabaya with his Indonesian management team.
“My only thought are with the passengers and my crew. We put our hope in the SAR (search and rescue) operation and thank the Indonesia, Singapore and Malaysian governments,” he said on Twitter.
The incident comes at the end of a disastrous year for the region’s airlines.
3rd air incident connected to Malaysia
Malaysia’s national flag carrier, Malaysia Airlines, lost two aircraft this year.
A Changi Airport employee in Singapore holds up a sign to direct possible relatives of passengers of AirAsia Flight QZ8501. (Edgar Su/Reuters)
Flight MH370 went missing on March 8 on a trip from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing with 239 passengers and crew on board and has still not been found.
On July 17, Flight MH17 was shot down over Ukraine, killing all 298 people on board.
Indonesia AirAsia has a fleet of 30 Airbus A320s. The missing plane has been in service for just over six years, according to airfleets.net.
All AirAsia-branded airlines operate aircraft made by Airbus, which has orders for several hundred planes from the group. AirAsia is considered one of the European planemaker’s most important customers.
On mobile? Click here to see the approximate flight path of Flight QZ8501
