JAKARTA, Indonesia (AP) — An
astonishingly tragic year for air
travel in Southeast Asia turned
worse Sunday when an AirAsia
plane carrying 162 people
disappeared over stormy
Indonesian waters, with no word
on its fate despite several hours
of searching by air and sea.
AirAsia Flight 8501 vanished in
airspace thick with storm clouds
on its way from Surabaya,
Indonesia, to Singapore.
Searchers had to fight against
heavy rain.
The Malaysia-based carrier's loss
comes on top of the still-
unexplained disappearance of
Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 in
March and the downing of
Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 in July
over Ukraine.
At the Surabaya airport,
passengers' relatives pored over
the plane's manifest, crying and
embracing. Nias Adityas, a
housewife from Surabaya, was
overcome with grief when she
found the name of her husband,
Nanang Priowidodo, on the list.
The 43-year-old tour agent had
been taking a family of four on a
trip to Singapore, Malaysia and
Indonesia's Lombok island, and
had been happy to get the work.
"He just told me, 'Praise God, this
new year brings a lot of good
fortune,'" Adityas recalled, holding
her grandson tight while
weeping uncontrollably. "He
apologized because he could not
join us for the new year
celebration."
Nearly all the passengers and
crew are Indonesians, who are
frequent visitors to Singapore,
particularly on holidays.
The Airbus A320 took off Sunday
morning from Indonesia's
second-largest city and was
about halfway to Singapore when
it vanished from radar. The jet
had been airborne for about 42
minutes.
There was no distress signal from
the twin-engine, single-aisle
plane, said Djoko Murjatmodjo,
Indonesia's acting director
general of transportation.
The last communication between
the cockpit and air traffic control
was at 6:13 a.m. (23:13 GMT
Saturday), when one of the pilots
"asked to avoid clouds by turning
left and going higher to 34,000
feet (10,360 meters),"
Murjatmodjo said. The jet was last
seen on radar at 6:16 a.m. and
was gone a minute later, he told
reporters.
Indonesia, Singapore and
Malaysia launched a search-and-
rescue operation near Belitung
island in the Java Sea, the area
where the airliner lost contact
with the ground.
The air search was suspended
Sunday evening and was to
resume Monday morning, said
Achmad Toha of Indonesia's
search-and-rescue agency. Some
ships continued looking for the
aircraft overnight, he said.
AirAsia group CEO Tony
Fernandes flew to Surabaya and
told a news conference that the
focus should be on the search
and the families rather than the
cause of the incident.
"We have no idea at the moment
what went wrong," said
Fernandes, a Malaysian
businessman who founded the
low-cost carrier in 2001. "Let's
not speculate at the moment."
Malaysia-based AirAsia has a
good safety record and had never
lost a plane before.
"This is my worst nightmare,"
Fernandes tweeted.
But Malaysia itself has already
endured a catastrophic year, with
239 people still missing from
Flight 370 and all 298 people
aboard Flight 17 killed when it
was shot down over rebel-held
territory in Ukraine.
AirAsia said Flight 8501 was on
its submitted flight plan but had
requested a change due to
weather.
Sunardi, a forecaster at
Indonesia's Meteorology and
Geophysics Agency, said dense
storm clouds were detected up to
13,400 meters (44,000 feet) in
the area at the time.
"There could have been
turbulence, lightning and vertical
as well as horizontal strong
winds within such clouds," said
Sunardi, who like many
Indonesians uses only one name.
Airline pilots routinely fly around
thunderstorms, said John Cox, a
former accident investigator.
Using on-board radar, flight
crews can typically see a storm
forming from more than 100
miles away.
In such cases, pilots have plenty
of time to find a way around the
storm cluster or look for gaps to
fly through, he said.
"It's not like you have to make an
instantaneous decision," Cox said.
Storms can be hundreds of miles
long, but "because a jet moves at
8 miles a minute, if you to go 100
miles out of your way, it's not a
problem."
It was unclear based on
comments from authorities what
air traffic controllers saw on their
screens when the plane
disappeared from radar, he
noted.
Authorities have not said whether
they lost only the secondary radar
target, which is created by the
plane's transponder, or whether
the primary radar target, which is
created by energy reflected from
the plane's body, was lost as well,
Cox said.
The plane had an Indonesian
captain and a French co-pilot, five
cabin crew members and 155
passengers, including 16 children
and one infant, the airline said in
a statement. Among the
passengers were three South
Koreans, a Malaysian, a British
national and his 2-year-old
Singaporean daughter. The rest
were Indonesians.
AirAsia said the captain has a
total of 6,100 flying hours, but
Fernandes later said the number
is more than 20,000. The first
officer has 2,275 flying hours.
At Surabaya airport, dozens of
relatives sat in a room waiting for
news, many of them talking on
mobile phones and crying. Some
looked dazed.
Dimas, who goes by one name,
said his wife, 30-year-old Ratri Sri
Andriani, had been on the flight
to lead a group of 25 Indonesian
tourists on a trip to Singapore
and Malaysia. He was holding out
hope that the plane had made an
emergency landing.
"We can just pray and hope that
all those aboard are safe," said
Dimas, who was surrounded by
Ratri's parents and friends at the
airport crisis center. "We are
worried, of course, but we have
to surrender to her fate."
Indonesia's search-and-rescue
head, Bambang Soelistyo, said his
agency would search Monday
with 12 ships and three
helicopters, along with five
military aircraft and a number of
warships.
Malaysia and Singapore each
planned to deploy one C-130
plane and three ships. Australia
will also help, he added.
The missing aircraft was
delivered to AirAsia in October
2008, and the plane had
accumulated about 23,000 flight
hours during some 13,600 flights,
Airbus said in a statement.
The aircraft had last undergone
scheduled maintenance on Nov.
16, according to AirAsia.
The airline, which has dominated
cheap travel in Southeast Asia for
years, flies short routes of just a
few hours, connecting the
region's large cities. Recently, it
has tried to expand into long-
distance flying through sister
airline AirAsia X.
Fernandes, who is the face of
AirAsia and an active Twitter user,
stirred controversy earlier this
year after incorrectly tweeting
that Malaysia Airlines Flight 370
had landed safely.
William Waldock, an expert on air
crash search and rescue with
Embry-Riddle Aeronautical
University in Prescott, Arizona,
cautioned against drawing
comparisons to Flight 370.
The circumstances bode well for
finding Flight 8501 since the
intended flight time was less than
two hours, and there is a known
position where the plane
disappeared, he said.
The A320 family of jets, which
includes the A319 and A321, has
a good safety record, with just
0.14 fatal accidents per million
takeoffs, according to a safety
study published by Boeing in
August.
Flight 8501 disappeared while at
its cruising altitude, which is
usually the safest part of a trip.
Just 10 percent of fatal crashes
from 2004 to 2013 occurred
while a plane was in that stage of
flight, the safety report said.

https://m.yahoo.com/w/legobpengine/frontpage/news/tv-plane-162-aboard-missing-indonesia-034017659.html?.b=%2Findex&.intl=us&.lang=en