Indonesian Airline Flight QZ8501 Captured Under The Sea

Jakarta -- Indonasian Air Line Video

AirAsia QZ8501: Forty Bodies Found In Missing Plane Search

 

Searchers have found what they think is the missing plane's slide

 

At least 40 bodies have been recovered from the sea in the search for missing AirAsia Flight QZ8501, the Indonesian navy says.

The bodies were spotted along with debris floating in the Java Sea off the Indonesian part of Borneo, in one of the search zones for the plane.

There has been no official confirmation that the remains come from the plane.

The Airbus A320-200, carrying 162 people from Surabaya in Indonesia to Singapore, disappeared on Sunday.

The search operation is now in its third day, with the area widened to cover 13 zones over land and sea.

In a separate development, there were reports of a second incident involving an AirAsia plane at Kalibo in the central Philippines. The reports said the plane overshot the runway.
 

Pictures of debris were taken by search and rescue aircraft

Rescuers 'busy'

During a news conference by the head of the search operation, shown live on Indonesian TV, pictures of the debris were shown including a body floating on the water.

Relatives of passengers on the plane watching the pictures were visibly shocked.

Later, the Indonesian navy reported that 40 bodies had been retrieved by one warship.

Its spokesman said the rescuers were continuing to recover bodies and were "very busy now".

AirAsia CEO Tony Fernandes tweeted to the families: "My heart is filled with sadness for all the families involved in QZ 8501. On behalf of AirAsia my condolences."

  

At the scene: Alice Budisatrijo, BBC News, Surabaya

 

They had been hoping for a miracle, but in the end they had to watch the worst possible news.
Relatives of the passengers screamed and wailed as local television networks showed pictures of what was clearly a human body floating in the water.

Grown men put their hands to their faces. At least two people collapsed and were taken out of the room on stretchers.

The mayor of Surabaya, Tri Rismaharini, went from one crying relative to another, and at one point walked out with a grieving man, while telling him: "We don't have a choice. Today this happens to you, tomorrow it may happen to me. Nobody knows. So you have to be strong. Our lives belong to God."

Alice Budisatrijo witnessed relatives screaming and crying as they watched a news conference on screens in Surabaya

Search operation head Bambang Soelistyo said he was 95% certain the objects shown were from the plane, adding that a shadow was spotted under water which appeared to be in the shape of a plane.

All resources were now being sent to the area where the debris was found, he said.

Mr Soelistyo added that ships with more sophisticated technology were being deployed to check whether larger parts of the plane were submerged beneath the debris.

Indonesian civil aviation chief Djoko Murjatmodjo, quoted by AFP news agency, said "significant things" such as a passenger door and cargo door had been found.

He added that the objects had been found 160km (100 miles) south-west of Pangkalan Bun in Borneo's Central Kalimantan province.
At least 30 ships, 15 aircraft and seven helicopters joined the operation when it resumed at 06:00 local time on Tuesday (23:00 GMT Monday).

It's been a trying and exhausting wait for the more than 100 relatives who have been gathering in that room, but no-one could have been prepared for this ending.

Search and rescue operations are now in their third day

The operation, led by Indonesia, includes assistance from Malaysia, Singapore and Australia, with other offers of help from South Korea, Thailand, China and France. The US destroyer USS Sampson is on its way to the zone.
 

Communication lost:

 On board the plane were 137 adult passengers, 17 children and one infant, along with two pilots and five crew.

Most were Indonesian but the passengers included one UK national, a Malaysian, a Singaporean and three South Koreans.

Editor Geoffrey Thomas: AirAsia flight QZ8501 may "have have been caught in a severe thunderstorm updraft"

The plane left Surabaya at 05:35 Jakarta time on Sunday and had been due to arrive in Singapore two hours later.

Safety officials say the captain had asked for permission to take the plane higher but, by the time permission was granted, communication with the plane was lost.

It was officially declared missing at 07:55.

AirAsia previously had an excellent safety record and there were no fatal accidents involving its aircraft.

AirAsia plane with 162 on board missing in Indonesia

This picture shows an airplane of Kuala Lumpur-based AirAsia. — AFP

JAKARTA: An AirAsia plane with 162 people on board lost contact with ground control on Sunday while flying over the Java Sea after taking off from a provincial city in Indonesia for Singapore, and search and rescue operations were underway.

The two countries immediately launched a search and rescue operation but there was no word on the plane's whereabouts more than six hours after it went missing.

AirAsia, a regional low-cost carrier with presence in several Southeast Asian countries, said in a statement that the missing Airbus A320-200 was on the submitted flight plan route.

However, it had requested deviation due to weather before communication with the aircraft was lost while it was still under the control of the Indonesian Air Traffic Control.

“We don't dare to pressume what has happened exceped that it has lost contact,” Djoko Murjatmodjo, Indonesia's acting director general of transportation, told reporters.

He said the last contact between pilot and the air traffic control was at 6.13 am (2313 GMT Saturday) “when he asked to hinder cloud by turning left and go higher to 34,000 feet”.

He said there was no distress signal from Flight QZ8501. The contact was lost about 42 minutes after the single-aisle jetliner took off from Indonesia's Surabaya airport, Hadi Mustofa, an official of the transportation ministry told Indonesia's MetroTV.
It was about an hour before it was scheduled to land in Singapore at 0030gmt. Flight QZ8501 tlost communication with Jakarta's air traffic control at 7:24 am Singapore time (2324 GMT Saturday) about an hour before it was scheduled to land in Singapore, the Singapore Civil Aviation Authority said in a statement.
The plane had two pilots, five cabin crew and 155 passengers, including 16 children and one infant, AirAsia Indonesia said in a statement. Indonesian officials had earlier said there were 161 people on board, presumably because the infant was not counted.

The AirAsia statement said there were six foreigners — three South Koreans and one each from Singapore, Malaysia and France. The rest were Indonesians. It said the captain in command had a total of 6,100 flying hours, a substantial number, and the first officer a total of 2,275 flying hours.

At Surabaya airport, dozens of relatives sat in a room, many of them talking on mobile phones and crying. Some looked dazed. Murjatmodjo, the Indonesian official, said the plane is believed to have gone missing somewhere over the Java Sea between Tanjung Pandan on Belitung island and Pontianak, on Indonesia's part of Kalimantan island.

He said the pilot contacted Jakarta air traffic control 6:12 a.m. reporting clouds and asking to go higher from 32,000 feet (9,700 meters ) to 34,000 feet (10,303 meters), the usual cruising altitude for jetliners.
The Singapore statement said search and rescue operations have been activated by the Indonesian authorities. It said the Singapore air force and the navy also were searching with two C-130 planes.
Flightradar24, a flight tracking website, said the plane was delivered in September 2008, which would make it six years old.
The Malaysia-based AirAsia, which has dominated cheap travel in the region for years, has never lost a plane before. AirAsia Malaysia owns 49 per cent of the Indonesian subsidiary.
This is the third major air incident involving Malaysia this year. On March 8, Malaysia Airlines flight 370, a wide-bodied Boeing 777, went missing soon after taking off from Kuala Lumpur for Beijing. It remains missing until this day with 239 people in one of the biggest aviation mysteries.
Another Malaysia Airlines flight, also a Boeing 777, was shot down over rebel-controlled eastern Ukraine while on a flight from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur on July 17. A total of 298 people on board were killed.
The crew's request for an unusual route is curious since the weather “didn't seem to be anything unusual,” said William Waldock, an expert on air crash search and rescue with Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University in Prescott, Arizona.
Severe weather is the reason pilots usually request a different route, but in this case the “winds were light, there were a few thin clouds, but that's about it,” he said in an interview.
Waldock cautioned against drawing comparisons to the disappearance of Malaysia flight 370. “I think we have to let this play out,” he said. “Hopefully, the airplane will get found, and if that happens it will probably be in the next few hours. Until then, we have to reserve judgment.”
The circumstances bode well for finding the plane since the intended flight time was less than two hours and there is a known position at which the plane disappeared, he said.