Special NEWS @WORLD

 

AirAsia Plane En Route To Singapore Is Missing

This is very hurtful for everyone around the globe +PEOPLE 

The plane lost contact with air traffic control while flying from Indonesia to Singapore on Sunday, after requesting a “deviation” from the normal flight path due to weather conditions. More than 160 people were on board, the airline said. 

Information we got

• An AirAsia plane lost contact with air traffic control Sunday while flying from Surabaya, Indonesia, to Singapore.
• An Indonesia Transport Ministry official said they have halted the search for the day “because it was getting dark,” but that they will resume the search at 7:00 a.m. Monday morning, local time, or even earlier “if the weather is good.”
• Before the plane vanished, the Airbus A320-200 had requested a “deviation due to enroute weather.”
• The airline said the plane was carrying a total of 162 people, including two pilots, four flight attendants, and an engineer.
• In an updated statement, AirAsia confirmed that a British citizen was among the passengers.

An AirAsia plane lost contact with air traffic control Sunday while flying from Surabaya, Indonesia, to Singapore.

Flight QZ 8501 lost contact at 7:24 a.m. local time, AirAsia confirmed in a statement posted to Facebook.

An initial search and rescue operation commenced after the plane vanished. The search stopped for the day at 5:30 p.m. local time due to darkness, according to an AFP report. “The weather was also not too good as it was getting really cloudy. Tomorrow we will begin at 7 am, or even earlier than that if the weather is good,” Hadi Mustofa, an Indonesia Transport Ministry official, told AFP.
The plane was more than 200 nautical miles (230 miles) southeast of Singapore-Jakarta airspace when it disappeared, according to a statement from Civil Aviation Authority of Singapore (CAAS).

Before it vanished, the Airbus A320-200 had requested a “deviation due to enroute weather,” according to the statement AirAsia posted on its Facebook page. The plane had been scheduled to land at 8:30 a.m. Singapore time.
The airline said the plane was carrying a total of 162 people, including two pilots, four flight attendants, and an engineer.

Of the passengers, 137 were adults and 16 were children. One passenger was an infant. There were two pilots, four cabin crew, and one engineer the airline said in a statement.
AirAsia disclosed the nationalities of passengers on board, saying there were 149 people from Indonesia, three from South Korea, one from Malaysia, one from Singapore, and one person from the United Kingdom.
They also disclosed the nationalities of the crew on board. Of the crew members, there were six people from Indonesia, and one person from France.
The captain has a total of 6,100 flying hours, while the first officer has 2,275 flying hours. 

World leaders announced they were monitoring the situation in the hours after the flight went missing.

President Obama was briefed on the plane late Saturday night, according to a statement from the White House.

Malaysian Prime Minister Mohd Najib Tun Razak tweeted Sunday that his country was ready to help in the search. Indonesian Vice President Jusuf Kalla tweeted Sunday that he hoped the passengers and crew would be found. And Liow Tiong Lai, Malaysia’s Minister of Transport, announced that he too had been briefed and was monitoring the situation.