AirAsia plane with 162 on board missing in Indonesia

Rescuers scoured the Java Sea for an AirAsia plane carrying 162 people which went missing in bad weather Sunday en route from Indonesia to Singapore, the third crisis for a Malaysian carrier this year.

Air traffic controllers lost contact with the Airbus A320-200 around an hour after it left Juanda international airport at Surabaya in east Java, at 5:20am (2220 GMT Saturday).

It was scheduled to arrive in Singapore at 8:30am (0030 GMT).

Shortly before disappearing, the plane asked permission from Jakarta air traffic control to deviate from its flight plan and climb above bad weather in an area noted for severe thunderstorms.

The pilots requested “deviation due to enroute weather before communication with the aircraft was lost while it was still under the control of the Indonesian Air Traffic Control”, AirAsia said in a statement on its Facebook page.

The airline said 156 of those on board Flight QZ8501 were Indonesians, with three South Koreans and one person each from Singapore, Malaysia and France.

There were 138 adult passengers, 16 children and an infant, in addition to five cabin crew and the pilot and co-pilot, who is believed to be French.

“We don’t dare to presume what has happened except that it has lost contact.” Djoko Murjatmodjo, Indonesia’s acting director general of transportation, told reporters. He said the last communication between the pilot and air traffic control was at 6:13 a.m. (2313 GMT Saturday) when the pilot “asked to avoid clouds by turning left and going higher to 34,000 feet.”

He said there was no distress signal from the cockpit.

Murjatmodjo said the plane is believed to have gone missing somewhere over the Java Sea between Tanjung Pandan on Belitung island and Pontianak, on Indonesia’s part of Kalimantan island.

The contact was lost about 42 minutes after the single-aisle, twin-engine jetliner took off from Surabaya airport, Hadi Mustofa, an official of the transportation ministry told Indonesia’s MetroTV. It was about an hour before it was scheduled to land in Singapore at 0030 GMT.

Minister of Transportation Ignasius Jonan told reporters in Surabaya that the position was believed to be near the coast line. He said search and rescue efforts now involved the Indonesian army, the national Search and Rescue Agency as well as Singapore and Malaysia. But that the effort will focus on the area around Belitung island.

The Malaysia-based AirAsia, which has dominated cheap travel in the region for years, flies short routes of just a few hours, connecting large cities of Southeast Asia. However, recently it has tried to expand into long-distance flying through its sister airline AirAsia X. AirAsia Malaysia owns 49 percent of its subsidiary, AirAsia Indonesia.

The Indonesian air force said two of its planes had been sent to scour an area of the Java Sea, southwest of Pangkalan Bun in Kalimantan province–around halfway along the flight’s expected route.

A Singaporean C-130 military transport aircraft was also on the way to the area, after Indonesia accepted help from its Southeast Asian neighbour.

Anxiety builds

The twin-engine aircraft was operated by AirAsia Indonesia, a unit of Malaysian-based AirAsia which dominates Southeast Asia’s booming low-cost airline market.

AirAsia’s flamboyant boss Tony Fernandes, a former record industry executive who acquired the then-failing airline in 2001, said he was on his way to Surabaya, where most of the passengers are from.

“My only thought (sic) are with the passengers and my crew,” he added on his Twitter page.

With hard details few and far between, panicked relatives gathered at Singapore’s Changi airport.

In Surabaya hundreds of Indonesians descended on the terminal, hoping for news of the missing jet.

A 45-year-old woman told AFP that she had six family members on the plane.

“They were going to Singapore for a holiday,” she said.

“They have always flown with AirAsia and there was no problem. I am shocked to hear the news, and I am very worried that the plane might have crashed.”

Indonesia, a vast archipelago with poor land transport infrastructure, has seen an explosive growth in low-cost air travel over recent years.

But the air industry has been blighted by poor safety standards in an area that also experiences extreme weather.

AirAsia said the missing jet last underwent maintenance on November 16. The company has never suffered a fatal accident.

It swiftly replaced its distinctive bright red logo with a grey background on its social media pages.

An official from Indonesia’s transport ministry said the pilot asked to ascend by 6,000 feet to 38,000 feet to avoid heavy clouds.

“The plane is in good condition but the weather is not so good,” Djoko Murjatmodjo told a press conference at Jakarta’s airport, addressing reports of severe storms in the area where the jet went missing.

Climbing to dodge large rain clouds is a standard procedure for aircraft in these conditions.

“There is nothing wrong to do that. What happens after that is a question mark,” according to Indonesian-based aviation analyst Dudi Sudibyo.

Malaysia and Australia joined aircraft manufacturer Airbus in pledging help in the investigation.

The White House said US President Barack Obama had been briefed on the disappearance and it was monitoring the situation.

The plane’s disappearance comes at the end of a disastrous year for Malaysian aviation.

Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370, carrying 239 people, vanished in March after inexplicably diverting from its Kuala Lumpur-Beijing course. No trace of it has been found.

Another Malaysia Airlines plane went down in July in rebellion-torn eastern Ukraine, killing all 298 aboard. It was believed to have been hit by a surface-to-air missile.

AirAsia has seen spectacular success and aggressive growth under Fernandes’ low-cost, low-overheads model.

While its rival Malaysia Airlines faces potential collapse after the two disasters this year, AirAsia this month confirmed its order of 55 A330-900neo passenger planes at a list price of $15 billion.

William Waldock, an expert on air crash search and rescue with Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University in Prescott, Arizona, cautioned against drawing comparisons to the disappearance of Malaysia flight 370.

“I think we have to let this play out,” he said. “Hopefully, the airplane will get found, and if that happens it will probably be in the next few hours. Until then, we have to reserve judgment.”

The circumstances bode well for finding the plane since the intended flight time was less than two hours and there is a known position at which the plane disappeared, he said.

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