AirAsia Plane With 162 People (Including 17 Children and 7 crew members) is Missing

Another Asian airliner has gone missing: AirAsia flight QZ8501 lost contact with air traffic control at 7:24 a.m. local time on Sunday, AirAsia reported about four hours after the plane disappeared en route to Singapore. Sunday’s missing AirAsia flight was traveling between Surabaya, in Indonesia, and Singapore. There were 155 passengers and seven crew on board the Airbus A320-200, officials have said.
An AirAsia official told the media on Sunday that the plane had requested “an unusual route” before air traffic control lost contact with QZ8501 over the Java Sea. However, an Indonesia Transport Ministry spokesperson later clarified that the pilot’s request was permission to change altitude due to bad weather, Steve Herman reported for the Voice of America. “At the present time we unfortunately have no further information,” according to AirAsia’s statement. “At this time, search and rescue operations are in progress and AirAsia is cooperating fully and assisting the rescue service.” In March 2014, Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 lost contact with air traffic control when it was about several hundred miles north of Singapore. Rescuers still have been unable to find any traces of flight MH370, or its 239 passengers and crew, despite an unprecedented search effort. In April 2014, or one month after MH370 went missing, AirAsia’s CEO was forced to apologize after the company’s in-flight magazine suggested that AirAsia’s own well-trained pilots would never lose a plane.