The sudden disappearance of AirAsia Flight QZ8501 in the Indonesian airspace one hour after takeoff has fuelled a number of questions. For instance, what caused the loss of contact? Is air travel still safe? Why an Asian airline again?
Questions are countless but the fact remains that the Air Bus A320-200 took off from the Indonesian city of Surabaya at 05:36 GMT local time Sunday with 155 passengers and 7 crewmembers on board. The destination was Singapore, a journey that takes a little over two hours. It hadn’t been even an hour after takeoff, roughly around 06:12 GMT, one of the pilots asked air traffic control permission to turn and climb to a higher altitude in an attempt to avoid bad weather. Minutes later, the plane disappeared from air traffic control’s radar. At 07:55 GMT the plan was declared missing, its last known position being over the Java Sea, between the islands of Belitung and Borneo.
Indonesia's National Search and Rescue Agency chief Bambang Soelistyo says that the multinational search teams are scouring an area where the Java Sea is 40-50 metres (130-160 feet) deep. Indonesia has accepted Singapore's offer of two sets of underwater locator beacon detectors to scour the seabed. Unfortunately, the chances of mud and hard rock’s interference with sonar pings emitted by the plane's Emergency Locator Transmitter (ELT) are quite high.
Meanwhile, the airline company continues to provide support and assistance to the next-of-kin of passengers’ on Flight QZ8501. AirAsia has already flown 16 next-of-kin to Indonesia and plans to transport another 11 there on Monday, 29th December 2014.
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For the original version on newsmobile.in visit: http://www.newsmobile.in/articles/2014/12/29/search-airasia-flight-qz8501-live-report
For the original version on newsmobile.in visit: http://www.newsmobile.in/articles/2014/12/29/search-airasia-flight-qz8501-live-report


