An AirAsia passenger jet carrying 162 people lost contact with Indonesian air traffic control early yesterday, gripping Southeast Asia with a second missing plane crisis in less than a year. The search operation for the missing AirAsia Flight QZ8501 has been halted for the night, but big ships won't return to shore and will leave their searchlights on, according to the Indonesian Transportation Mi
nistry. Before communication was lost, one of the pilots asked to fly at a higher altitude because of bad weather, officials said. The search halted around 11 hours later, with no sign of the plane. It would resume at 7am Monday, or even earlier if the weather was good, Indonesian transport ministry official Hadi Mustofa told AFP. 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). No signal was received from it. 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. Advertisement "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." "According to our climate radar, the weather was not good. There was enough cumulonimbus (cloud) there," said Murjatmodjo. Of the people on board the Airbus A320-200, 155 are Indonesian, three are South Korean, one is British, one is French, one is Malaysian and one is Singaporean, the airline said. Seventeen children, including one infant, are among the passengers, the carrier said. Seven of the people on board are crew members. At the airport in Surabaya, loved ones gathered and wept as they waited for any word on the passengers. Some took cell phone pictures of a flight manifest posted on a wall. The black-and-white papers showed every passenger's name and seat number, but not their fate. Others simply sat and dabbed tears from their eyes. "Thank you for all your thoughts and prayers. We must stay strong," AirAsia Chief Executive Tony Fernandes said on Twitter, adding that this is his worst nightmare. He traveled to Surabaya, where most of the passengers are from. As word spread of the missing plane, the airline changed the color of its logo on its website and social media accounts from red to gray. Pope Francis prayed for the missing, according to Vatican Radio. THUNDERSTORMS Flight 8501 "was requesting deviation due to en route weather before communication with the aircraft was lost," the airline said. The flight's captain asked permission to climb to a higher altitude, Murdjatmojo said, according to the national news agency. According to flight tracking websites, almost the entire flight path of the plane was over the sea. Bad weather gripped the region at the time, CNN meteorologist Derek Van Dam said. "We still had lines of very heavy thunderstorms" when the plane was flying, Van Dam said. "But keep in mind, turbulence doesn't necessarily bring down airplanes." CNN aviation analyst Mary Schiavo said that if there was an onboard emergency, the pilots should have issued a mayday call or a pan-pan call. "Mayday means you're immediately in danger of losing the flight; pan-pan means that it is urgent but that you can continue the flight and request an alternate route or an alternate airport," said Schiavo, a former inspector general for the US Department of Transportation. "It's disconcerting in that the standard procedures for an emergency don't seem to have been deployed," she said. The bad weather in the area is also likely to hamper the search efforts for the aircraft, said Alan Diehl, a former US air accident investigator. The Malaysian government said it had deployed three vessels and three aircraft to help Indonesian authorities in the search for the plane. Singapore said it had activated its rescue and aviation agencies. Australia and India said said they had also offered assistance. Safety Reputation AirAsia is a Malaysia-based airline that is popular in the region as a budget carrier. It has about 100 destinations, with affiliate companies in several Asian countries. The missing plane is operated by AirAsia's Indonesian affiliate, in which the Malaysian company holds a 48.9% stake, according to its website. AirAsia has a "very good" reputation for safety, CNN aviation correspondent Richard Quest said.
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