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AirAsia flight loses contact with air traffic control between Indonesia and Singapore – as it happened

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Search and rescue mission for flight QZ8501, which vanished with 162 people on board, is suspended for the night. Operations will resume at 6am local time on Monday

 Updated 
Sun 28 Dec 2014 12.32 ESTFirst published on Sat 27 Dec 2014 23.36 EST
An airport official checks a map of Indonesia at the crisis center set up for the missing AirAsia flight QZ8501.
An airport official checks a map of Indonesia at the crisis center set up for the missing AirAsia flight QZ8501. Photograph: Trisnadi/AP
An airport official checks a map of Indonesia at the crisis center set up for the missing AirAsia flight QZ8501. Photograph: Trisnadi/AP

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Key events

Closing summary

  • Indonesian search and rescue teams are to resume operations at 6am local time on Monday, or earlier, depending on the weather. The search for AirAsia flight QZ8501 was suspended due to darkness. The US, Australia and India are among the countries to have offered help in the search.
  • The Briton on board the AirAsia flight has been named as Chi Man Choi, a businessman. He is thought to have been travelling with his daughter, Zoe, on tickets bought on Boxing Day. He is believed to hold a British passport but lives in Singapore with his family.
  • AirAsia said that the plane, flying from the Indonesian city of Surabaya to Singapore, lost contact with air traffic control at 7.24am local time when it was about halfway to its destination.
  • Indonesian transport officials say the crew asked to ascend to 38,000ft to avoid bad weather shortly before contact was lost. No distress call was made. There are reports that rescue teams are searching an area 145km from the island of Belitung, which lies between Sumatra and Borneo.
  • 162 people are on board the A320-200, including seven crew. The passengers and crew include 156 Indonesians, three South Koreans, one French, one Malaysian and one Singaporean, according to AirAsia. The pilot has been named as Iriyanto, while the copilot been named as Remi Emmanuel Plesel.

British national aboard flight QZ8501 named

The Briton on board the AirAsia flight QZ8501 has been named as Chi Man Choi. He is thought to have been travelling with his daughter, Zoe, on tickets bought on Boxing Day. He is believed to hold a British passport but lives in Singapore with his family. Channel News Asia has more details:

According to a copy of the passenger manifest released to Indonesian media, Mr Choi and Zoe bought their tickets on Friday (Dec 26). According to the manifest, they were seated in the first row, in Seats 1B and 1C.

According to his LinkedIn account, Mr Choi was born at Hull in Yorkshire, England, and graduated from the University of Essex in 1988.

He was Unit Managing Director for Thermal Services at energy firm Alstom Power, a position he held since July this year. Prior to that, he was based in Singapore, where he was a senior executive at Alstom Grid, according to his LinkedIn profile.

Channel NewsAsia understands that Mr Choi’s wife had travelled back to Singapore from Surabaya earlier with Zoe’s older brother.

US National Transportation Safety Board 'ready to assist'

A US NTSB spokesman said the agency is monitoring the search for the missing AirAsia plane and stands “ready to assist the Indonesians if needed”.

My colleague, Alexandra Topping (@LexyTopping), has a roundup on reaction from families in Singapore and Indonesia.

Frantic relatives and friends of passengers on board AirAsia flight QZ8501 have gathered at crisis centres at Juanda international airport in Indonesia and Changi airport, Singapore, desperately waiting for news about the missing plane.

The centres were set up in the hours following the disappearance of the AirAsia aircraft, which vanished from radar in Indonesian airspace on Sunday morning while on its way to Singapore.

At Changi airport, anxious relatives were kept apart from a large press pack, but one Indonesian national told the waiting media that she was waiting for news of her fiance, whom she identified as a 27-year-old entrepreneur called Alain and who she said was on board the flight along with five family members.

Louise Sidharta, 25, said she and her partner had taken separate flights from Surabaya to Singapore, and she only found out about the missing aircraft upon arriving in Singapore on a later flight, reported AFP. She told reporters she was hoping for the best and urged everyone to “think positive thoughts”. “This was supposed to be his last trip with his family before we got married,” she added.

You can read her story in full here.

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Kirsten Han (@kixes), a Singaporean journalist, describes the scene at Changi airport, where relatives of the missing passengers are anxiously awaiting news.

AirAsia flight QZ8501 was meant to land in Singapore at 8:30 in the morning on 28 December. It never arrived.

It had lost contact with air traffic controllers in Jakarta not long after taking off from Surabaya in East Java, and vanished somewhere between Pontianak in West Kalimantan and Tanjung Pandan in Belitung Island. 162 people were on board; 155 passengers and seven crew members.

As night falls over Singapore, the QZ8501 listing has finally been removed from arrival boards in Singapore’s bustling Changi airport. Earlier it had read “go to info counter”, in sharp contrast to all the other flights that were upgraded from “confirmed” to “landed”.

Airport staff quickly established a private “relatives holding area” (RHA) for family and friends of the missing passengers. The entrance is cordoned off, and guarded by security officers to protect the anxious relatives from prying eyes.

Just beyond the cordon the press corps wait, eager for news and updates. Without any press conferences or media briefings, reporters are desperate for any tidbit that they can find. Any next-of-kin found outside the private area is swiftly surrounded by a media scrum, microphones and cameras shoved in their faces.

This was how Louise Sidharta found herself surrounded by journalists, eager to hear her story. The 25-year-old Indonesian’s fiancé was on the flight, along with his parents and other relatives: a fact that she had found out over the radio this morning.

“They say we just need to wait until we have more updates,” she told the press shortly before being ushered into the holding area. According to a press statement by the Changi Airport Group (CAG), 47 family and friends of 57 passengers are waiting for news behind the cordon and screens.

Beyond the impatient journalists lined up against the walls texting their editors and updating live blogs, the rest of Changi Airport carries on business as usual. Families take photos before the elaborate Christmas decorations, and travellers continue to queue at the check-in counters, including AirAsia’s.

Travellers speak of sadness and sympathy for the tragedy, but none I spoke to said they would reconsider travelling with AirAsia. Just before 9pm a CAG spokesman informed the press that all next-of-kin had been moved from the holding area, leaving from another exit away from the press. 16 people took up the offer to fly to Surabaya to join the many other waiting relatives there, he said. The rest chose either to return home or stay in a hotel.

With the search and rescue operations – and by extension, the media briefings – spearheaded by Indonesia, information is sparse in Changi airport. We know that Singapore has offered help to Indonesia: one C130 aircraft has since been launched, with two more planes to set off tomorrow morning.

An officer from the Civil Aviation Authority of Singapore (CAAS) will also send an officer to assist in the coordination of search and locate efforts, said a statement from CAAS.

Singapore’s Ministry of Transport’s Air Accident Investigation Bureau also offered two teams of specialists and two sets of underwater locator beacon detectors to assist in the search, said CAAS.

Among the missing passengers is also one British national, travelling with his two-year-old Singaporean daughter. Their family were contacted earlier and present at the RHA.

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Lunchtime summary

  • Indonesian search and rescue teams looking for passengers - including a Briton - on board missing AirAsia flight QZ8501 have suspended air operations due to darkness. The search will resume at 6am local time or earlier depending on the weather. Australia and India have offered to help in the search.
  • AirAsia said its flight Qz8501, flying from the Indonesian city of Surabaya to Singapore, lost contact with air traffic control at 7.24am local time when it was about halfway to its destination. 162 people are on board the A320-200, including seven crew.
  • The passengers and crew include 156 Indonesians, three South Koreans, one French, one Malaysian and one Singaporean, according to AirAsia. The pilot has been named as Iriyanto, while the copilot been named as Remi Emmanuel Plesel.
  • Indonesian transport officials say the crew asked to ascend to 38,000ft to avoid bad weather shortly before contact was lost. No distress call was made. There are reports that rescue teams are searching an area 145km from the island of Belitung, which lies between Sumatra and Borneo.

David Learmount, Flight Global’s operations and safety editor, tells the Press Association that the chance of finding survivors is slim.

He said it was “routine” for pilots to request diversions when approaching stormy conditions, as was the case with the Airbus A320-200.

“We’re not just talking about thunder and lightning here,” he said. “Storms can be very, very powerful indeed and rip a medium-sized aeroplane completely apart. That’s why a pilot will routinely ask to divert around them. The plane could not still be airborne - it was a short-haul flight, there would be no fuel for staying in the air for quite as long as this.”

Learmount, who is a pilot, also ruled out the likelihood of passengers surviving a sea landing.

“The pilots were talking to air traffic control right until the last minute. Something distracted their attention so they were no longer able to keep talking. We don’t know what happened at the moment, and it doesn’t appear to be a deliberate act. We can speculate ad infinitum when the only thing we can go on is that it is missing. But I think the prognosis is not good.”

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Louise Sidharta, 25, told reporters that her fiance, Alain, was on the plane with five family members. “This was supposed to be his last trip with his family before we got married.” The video is from Channel NewsAsia.

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AP reports that the disappearance of an AirAsia jet is the latest air incident for Indonesia as it struggles to provide enough qualified pilots, mechanics, air traffic controllers and updated airport technology to ensure safety. It lists some of the recent crashes.

April 2013: A brand new Boeing 737-800 operated by Indonesian budget carrier Lion Air crashes off the Indonesian resort island of Bali, slamming into the ocean short of the runway while attempting to land in the rain. All 108 people on board survived, and there were no serious injuries. It was Lion Air’s seventh accident since 2002.

May 2012: A Russian-made Sukhoi Superjet-100 crashes into a volcano during a demonstration flight in Indonesia, killing all 45 people on board. Information recovered from the plane’s cockpit-voice and flight data recorders indicated the pilot in command was chatting with a potential buyer in the cockpit just before the plane slammed into dormant Mount Salak in West Java province.

January 2007: A Boeing 737 operated by Indonesia’s Adam Air vanishes on New Year’s Day on a domestic flight from Surabaya to Manado with 102 people aboard. Parts of the tail and other debris are found several days later, but it would take nearly nine months for the flight-data and cockpit recorders to be recovered. The fuselage is still on the ocean floor.

September 2005: A flight from Indonesia’s now-defunct Mandala Airlines is headed from Medan in north Sumatra to Bali when the plane crashes into a heavily populated residential area seconds after taking off, killing 149 people. The fatalities included 100 people aboard the plane and 49 on the ground. Seventeen people on the plane survived.

December 1997: All 104 people onboard are killed when a plane operated by Singapore-based SilkAir crashes into the Musi River in southern Sumatra en route from Jakarta to Singapore. U.S. investigators said that the pilot probably crashed on purpose, but an Indonesian investigation was inconclusive.

September 1997: An Airbus A300 operated by national carrier Garuda Indonesia crashes while approaching Medan Airport, killing all 234 people aboard. The plane, which had taken off from Jakarta, crashed into a mountainous, wooded area in low visibility.

From AFP: AirAsia says the missing jet last underwent maintenance on 16 November. The company was founded in 1996 and has never suffered a fatal accident in its 18-year history.

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The Jakarta Post reports that the Indonesian vice-president, Jusuf Kalla, is leading the search for the missing AirAsia flight QZ8501.

Kalla arrived on Sunday evening at the headquarters of the National Search and Rescue Agency (Basarnas) in Kemayoran, north Jakarta, to directly supervise and lead the operation.

“We’re mobilising all personnel to find the plane. Our focus is to find it as soon as possible,” he said.

President Joko “Jokowi” Widodo, who is on a trip to Sorong, Papua, has instructed the transportation minister Ignasius Jonan to provide prompt updates to the public regarding the search attempt.

“I’ve already instructed Basarnas, the Indonesian military [TNI], and the National Police to go all out in this search,” he said.

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Tatang Zaenuddin of Indonesia’s National Search and Rescue agency has told Reuters that the search operation will resume at 6am on Monday.

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Search for missing AirAsia plane halted for the day

Reports are coming in that the search for flight QZ8501, which disappeared with 162 people on board, has ended for now as darkness falls.

#BREAKING Search halted for the day for missing AirAsia plane, says Indonesia

— Agence France-Presse (@AFP) December 28, 2014
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A series of tweets from AirAsia boss Tony Fernandes, who says this is his worst nightmare.

Our priority is looking after all the next of Kin for my staff and passangers. We will do whatever we can. ... http://t.co/6BFsUR7zDS

— Tony Fernandes (@tonyfernandes) December 28, 2014

I as your group ceo will be there through these hard times. We will go through this terrible ordeal together ... http://t.co/6iO2zKcFzN

— Tony Fernandes (@tonyfernandes) December 28, 2014

To all my staff Airasia all stars be strong, continue to be the best. Pray hard. Continue to do your best for all our guests. See u all soon

— Tony Fernandes (@tonyfernandes) December 28, 2014

I am touched by the massive show of support especially from my fellow airlines. This is my worse nightmare. But there is no stopping.

— Tony Fernandes (@tonyfernandes) December 28, 2014

The Telegraph has this profile of Tony Fernandes, who bought the heavily indebted AirAsia from a company owned by the Malaysian government for just 25p in 2001.

He had no experience of running an airline, but this did not deter him and he set about transforming the carrier into a short-haul low cost airline in the mould of those recently established in the West.

In 2002, AirAsia had only two aircraft in the air, but under Mr Fernandes the company expanded rapidly and by the end of the decade it was flying 30 million passengers around the world on 86 planes.

But the 50-year-old businessman did not stop at airlines. After entering Formula 1 racing in 2010, buying a team called Lotus Racing (now called Caterham), the lifelong football fan became owner of Queen’s Park Rangers, the Premier League club, in 2011.

You can read the piece in full here.

More on this story

More on this story

  • AirAsia flight QZ8501: reports that sonar images show fuselage on bottom of Java Sea – rolling report

  • AirAsia flight QZ8501: families receive brutal confirmation of lost plane’s fate

  • AirAsia flight: teams retrieve bodies from Java Sea

  • Missing AirAsia flight QZ8501: airline confirms debris in Java Sea is from plane – rolling report

  • Bodies from AirAsia flight QZ8501 will go to Pangkalan Bun - video

  • AirAsia plane disappearance: storm clouds may be key clue

  • Missing AirAsia flight: pilot’s family prays for his safe return

  • Search for missing AirAsia flight QZ8501 halted as darkness falls

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