Misunderstanding sees family of 10 miss AirAsia Flight QZ8501

In this Nov 26, 2014 photo, AirAsia Airbus A320-200 passenger jets are parked on the tarmac at low cost terminal KLIA2 in Sepang, Malaysia. An AirAsia plane with 162 people on board lost contact with ground control on Sunday, Dec. 28, 2014, while flying over the Java Sea after taking off from a provincial city in Indonesia for Singapore, and search and rescue operations were underway. The planes in this photo are not the plane that went missing while flying from Indonesia to Singapore but one of the same models. AP/Vincent Thian

Ari Putro Cahyono, a resident of Surabaya, East Java, had mixed feelings after he and his nine family members failed to board the missing AirAsia Flight QZ8501 heading to Singapore on Sunday, after a misunderstanding forced them to miss the flight.

Ari said that he and his family had arrived at Juanda International Airport, Surabaya, at 5:30 a.m. as the flight was originally scheduled to depart at 7:20 a.m., but they later found out that the schedule had been changed to 5:20 a.m.

“I did not read the email notifying the change of the departure schedule,” said Ari as quoted by kompas.com.

The operator had offered Ari the chance to board the next flight, but he refused after being informed at the airport that air traffic control had lost contact with QZ8501 at around 6.30 a.m.

“Me and my family then decided to cancel the trip,” he said.

The aircraft, with 155 passengers on board, including one Briton, one Malaysian, one Singaporean and three Koreans, as well as seven crew, lost contact with air traffic control at around 6:17 a.m. local time.

The plane is reported to have requested an unusual route before it lost contact.

Several officials have suggested that the plane’s last coordinates were located close to Bangka Belitung province.

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