AirAsia plane with 162 onboard disappears in mid-air

• Indonesia AirAsia Flight QZ8501 flying to Singapore goes missing in Indonesia, search underway
• Right before disappearance, pilots reportedly asked to change course to a higher altitude due to bad weather
• On board were 155 Indonesians, three South Koreans and one each from Singapore, Malaysia and Britain, plus a French pilot

Indonesia called off until first light a search for an AirAsia plane with 162 people on board that went missing on Sunday after pilots asked to change course to avoid bad weather during a flight from Indonesia’s Surabaya city to Singapore.

The pilot of QZ8501 “was requesting deviation due to en-route weather before communication with the aircraft was lost,” the airline said in a statement.

According to details, Indonesia AirAsia Flight QZ8501, an Airbus 320-200 carrying 155 passengers and seven crew members, lost contact with Jakarta air traffic control at 11:17 pm GMT on Saturday. No distress signal had been sent, said Joko Muryo Atmodjo, an Indonesian Transport Ministry official.

Flight QZ8501 was between Tanjung Pandan on Indonesia’s BelitungIsland and Pontianak, in West Kalimantan province on Borneo – almost halfway between Surabaya and Singapore – when it went missing.

There was bad weather over Belitung at the time and the aircraft had been flying at 32,000 feet before asked to fly at 38,000 feet to avoid clouds.

On board were 155 Indonesians, three South Koreans and one each from Singapore, Malaysia and Britain, plus a French pilot, the airline said in a statement, correcting earlier information.

Indonesia’s National Committee of Safety Transportation head Tatang Kurniadi reportedly expressed hope of locating the aircraft quickly, adding that it was “too early” to detect any of the so-called electronic pings from its black box recorder.

“We are using our capacity to search on sea and land. Hopefully, we can find the location of the plane as soon as possible,” he told a news conference.

“What I need to emphasise is until now, we have not found out how the plane fell or what kind of emergency it was.”

Indonesia AirAsia is 49 percent owned by Malaysia-based budget carrier AirAsia, which has had a clean safety record since it began operating 13 years back. The AirAsia group also has affiliates in Thailand, Philippines and India.

The aircraft had reportedly accumulated approximately 23,000 flight hours in some 13,600 flights.

Singapore, Malaysia, Britain, South Korea and Australia have offered to help in the search and any investigation.

Malaysia said it was sending vessels and a C130 aircraft while Singapore had also sent a C130. Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott said a P3 Orion aircraft was on standby if needed.

ANXIOUS RELATIVES:

In the meanwhile, anxious relatives of the people onboard await news in both Surabaya and Singapore.

Louise Sidharta was at Singapore’s ChangiAirport waiting for her fiancé to return from a family holiday. “It was supposed to be their last vacation before we got married,” she said.

A man named Purnomo told a local news channel in Surabaya of a lucky escape. “I should have been on the flight,” he said.

“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 I did not take the flight.”

Malaysia’s AirAsia chief Tony Fernandes said he was heading to Surabaya.

“My only thoughts are with the passengers and my crew. We put our hope in the SAR (search and rescue) operation and thank the governments of Indonesia, Singapore and Malaysia for their support,” he said on Twitter.

Moreover, in line with the incident, AirAsia swapped its distinctive bright red logo for a grey background on its website and social media accounts.

MISSING FLIGHT IS THIRD MALAYSIA-LINKED DISAPPEARANCE:

It should be mentioned here that the disappearance is the third air incident this year involving Malaysia.

The disappearance of Malaysia Airlines Boeing 777 on March 8 triggered one of modern aviation’s most perplexing mysteries when Flight 370, carrying 239 people from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing, vanished without a trace.

Investigators believe the aircraft ran out of fuel and crashed, based largely on an analysis of transmissions between the plane and a satellite.

In another incident, all 298 passengers and crew aboard Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 were killed when the Boeing 777 was shot down over rebel-held eastern Ukraine on July 17.

The plane was flying from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur when, according to Dutch air crash investigators, it was likely struck by multiple “high-energy objects” that some aviation experts say is consistent with a missile strike.