Air Asia Missing Flight Updates

An AirAsia jet with 162 individuals on board disappeared Sunday while flying from Indonesia's second-largest town to Singapore on a scheduled  two-hour flight. Here is a look at the key developments.

Air Asia Flight 8501 soars from Surabaya, Indonesia's second-largest town, at 5.31am on Sunday (2231 UT1 Saturday), sure for Singapore.

The last communication between the pilot and traffic management is formed at vi.13am (2313 UT1 on Saturday), once the pilot asks to show left and climb to ten,360 meters (34,000 feet) to "avoid clouds," in step with Djoko Murjatmodjo, Indonesia's acting director general of transportation, United Nations agency additionally says there was no sign from the cockpit.

AirAsia says the airliner A320-200 was on the submitted flight set up route. Murjatmodjo says it's believed to own gone missing somewhere over the Java ocean between Tanjung Pandan on Belitung island and Pontianak, on Indonesia's a part of Kalimantan island.

Indonesia's Meteorology and geology Agency says dense storm clouds were detected up to 13,400 meters (44,000 feet) within the same space at the time the plane was rumored to own lost contact.

A search and operation is launched involving state, Singapore and Malaya. 3 Indonesian craft square measure sent to the realm, whereas Singapore's air force and navy search with 2 C-130 planes. state says two hundred rescuers were deployed to the side of Belitung island. The air search is suspended at fall, and is ready to resume at 6am on weekday (2300 UT1 Sunday).

Dozens of relatives of individuals aboard the plane furl an area at Surabaya airfield to wait word concerning their dear ones. Among the passengers were 3 South Koreans and one every from Singapore, Malaya and also the uk. the remainder were Indonesians.

Malaysian man of affairs Tony Fernandes, AirAsia's chief and also the face of the corporate, tweets, "This is my worst nightmare". He flies to Surabaya, wherever he says at a press conference that the main focus ought to get on the search and also the families. "We haven't any plan at the instant what went wrong. Let's not speculate at the instant," he says.

In a separate incident later Sunday, associate degree AirAsia flight carrying over one hundred fifty passengers experiences a technical drawback concerning ten minutes once beginning from Penang, Malaysia, and has got to come back to the airfield, AirAsia says. The flight soars once more for the short flight to Langkawi island and safely reaches its destination.