3rd case in a year: AirAsia plane with 162 on board goes missing

After change of plan due to stormy weather Malaysian Airbus disappears from radar

JAKARTA: An AirAsia plane with 162 people on board went missing on Sunday in the Java Sea after the crew requested a change of flight plan due to stormy weather.

The Airbus A320-200 disappeared en route from Surabaya in Indonesia’s east Java to Singapore, in the third crisis for a Malaysian carrier this year.

Around 11 hours later, the search halted with no sign of the plane and was set to resume at 7am on Monday – or earlier if the weather allows, Indonesian transport ministry official Hadi Mustofa said.

AirAsia said 155 of those on board Flight QZ8501 were Indonesians, with three South Koreans and one person each from Singapore, Malaysia, Britain and France. The Frenchman was the co-pilot.

With hard details few and far between, panicked relatives gathered at Singapore’s Changi airport and in Surabaya hundreds of Indonesians thronged the terminal.

The US State Department said it was aware of the search and rescue operation under way being led by regional authorities, adding it “stands ready to assist in any way that’s helpful”.

Air traffic controllers lost contact with the twin-engine aircraft around an hour after it left Surabaya’s Juanda international airport at about 5:20am (2220 GMT Saturday).

Shortly before disappearing, the pilot asked to ascend by 6,000 feet to 38,000 feet to avoid heavy clouds, according to an Indonesian transport ministry official.

“The plane requested to air traffic control to fly to the left side, which was approved,” Djoko Murjatmodjo told a press conference, adding that “but their request to fly to 38,000 feet from 32,000 feet could not be approved at that time due to traffic, there was a flight above, and five minutes later the flight disappeared from radar.”

He said, “According to our climate radar, the weather was not good. There was enough cumulonimbus [cloud] there.”

Murjatmodjo maintained that Indonesia had deployed seven aircraft, four navy ships and six boats from the search and rescue agency.

The search focused on waters around the islands of Bangka and Belitung in the Java Sea, across from Kalimantan on Borneo island. But Murjatmodjo said the transport ministry had also asked the army to carry out ground searches, including in mountainous areas.

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

The plane’s disappearance comes at the end of a disastrous year for Malaysian aviation. Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370 disappeared while flying from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing in March with 239 passengers and crew, and in July, MH17 was shot down over troubled Ukraine killing all 298 on board.

Published in The Express Tribune, December 29^th, 2014.