Hopes are fading that 162 people aboard an AirAsia flight that went missing in storms over the Java sea on Sunday will be found safe
Storm clouds may be key clue to disappearance
No distress call, no red flags, no sign of wreckage
Search for missing plane halted on Sunday night
Tony Fernandes, the millionaire behind AirAsia
2.28pm AEST
This detailed report has just come through via the Associated Press:
The search for a missing AirAsia jet carrying 162 people that disappeared more than 24 hours ago on a flight from Indonesia to Singapore expanded Monday with planes and ships from several countries taking part.
1.59pm AEST
A commenter has raised a point about the confusing timeline around this incident. Just to be clear, the Indonesian acting director general of transportation, Djoko Murjatmodjo, told reporters on Sunday that the flight was last seen on Jakarta’s radar at 6:16am (Surabaya local time) and was gone one minute later.
What’s confusing the issue is that AirAsia, in its early statements, said that all contact was lost with the control tower over an hour later at 7:24am (Surabaya local time). They haven’t clarified this time.
1.36pm AEST
From my colleague Kate Lamb:
An Indonesian Search and Rescue official has said it is likely QZ8501 is now on the sea floor.
“The last coordinates were in the sea so it is likely it is on the sea floor,” Chief Marshal Bambang Soelistyo told a press conference at Soekarno Hatta Airport, Jakarta, on Monday.
1.27pm AEST
#BREAKING AirAsia Flight #QZ8501 likely 'at bottom of sea': Indonesia search chief
1.15pm AEST
Indonesia officials have struck an optimistic tone about the possibility of finding wreckage from QZ8501 - if indeed the plane crashed into the water. That’s partly because of the relatively shallow depth (46m) of the Java Sea, the part of the western Pacific Ocean where the aircraft vanished from radar screens.
In contrast, the faint Indian Ocean signals detected by the towed pinger locator aboard the Ocean Shield, in the search for MH370, were heard nearly 100 times deeper, at around 4,570m.
12.36pm AEST
From my colleague Kate Lamb in Indonesia:
Neighbours of QZ8501 pilot Irianto, have held a mass prayer for the captain in his hometown of Sidoarjo, East Java.
The pilot’s wife, Ida, reportedly locked herself in her room after hearing the missing AirAsia plane lost contact with Indonesian air traffic control.
Daughter of #AirAsia #QZ8501 pilot Captain Irianto begs for him to come home (pic included in link). https://t.co/Q1fze669bI
12.28pm AEST
My colleague Shalailah Medhora has rounded up Australian government reaction to this latest missing flight.
No Australians were on the AirAsia flight carrying 162 people that went missing over the Java sea on Sunday, the foreign minister, Julie Bishop, has confirmed.
“At this stage, I can confirm that there are no Australians on board,” Bishop said on Monday morning. “We are waiting for details of the [flight] manifest to determine whether there are any other linkages to Australia, [either] permanent residents or dual nationals,” she said.
12.17pm AEST
The United States Navy’s Seventh Fleet, which is stationed off Japan, says it stands ready to assist in the search for this missing flight, but has had no request to do so.
They’ve just sent this through, via my colleague Oliver Milman:
Following yesterday’s news of Air Asia flight QZ8501, we have received several queries regarding the U.S. Navy’s involvement in the search.
We are following the search and rescue operations for Air Asia flight QZ8501 that departed Surabaya, Indonesia for Singapore on December 28. The Indonesians and Malaysians are leading the search for the missing airplane. At this time, United States Navy assistance has not been requested. As we have in the past, the U.S. Navy assets in 7th Fleet stand ready to assist in any way that’s helpful. Our thoughts are with the passengers and families of Air Asia flight QZ8501.
12.04pm AEST
The manifest for QZ8501 shows that 26 people booked their tickets but missed the flight, among them Inge Goreti Ferdiningsih, her husband, and three children.
The family cancelled their trip to the Singapore resort island of Sentosa at the last minute when Ferdiningsih’s father suddenly fell ill.
11.54am AEST
The Indonesian Meteorology and Geophysics Agency (BMKG) has confirmed that QZ8501 was flying into an area of Cumulonimbus clouds before it disappeared in Indonesian Airspace more than 24 hours ago, the Guardian’s Indonesia contributor, Kate Lamb, reports.
“The BMKG recorded that weather conditions at the point where AirAsia lost contact, in the waters of Borneo had Cumulonimbus clouds with an altitude of 45,000 feet,” a BMKG spokesperson told Metro TV.
11.46am AEST
Australian air force pilots have joined the search for this missing AirAsia plane. An RAAF P3 Orion maritime patrol aircraft left from Darwin early on Monday morning to join the search, Defence said in a statement.
Defence Force boss Air Chief Marshal Mark Binskin said the Orion had well-proven search and rescue capabilities.
11.07am AEST
The apparent loss of this flight caps a horror year for commercial aviation, coming after the disappearance of Malaysia Airlines flight MH370, the shooting down of MH17, and similar tragedies in Mali and Iran.
But this year has actually seen fewer airliner accidents than in the past, statistics show. Please note, this chart does not include the missing AirAsia flight, nor corporate or military aircraft. It defines airliners as planes that carry 14 or more people, and accidents as a crashes that leaves an aircraft beyond repair.
10.56am AEST
Indonesia’s ambassador to Australia, Najib Riphat Kesoema, has just told the ABC that Sunday’s search involved eight boats, two aircraft and three helicopters, and will be bolstered this morning by the assistance of Singapore and other countries.
Kesoema said the weather on Monday morning was still “not very good” but had improved from yesterday.
10.39am AEST
A copy of the manifest for AirAsia QZ8501 has been posted online by the Indonesian department of transport, and is available here.
10.33am AEST
From the Guardian’s Indonesia contributor, Kate Lamb:
The search and rescue efforts are about to kick off as dawn breaks in Indonesia but local authorities on the island of Belitung say there are a number of challenges ahead.
“There are ferocious sea currents and westerly winds,” police chief superintendent Nugraha Trihadi told Indonesian news website, detik.com on Monday morning.
10.28am AEST
The Australian foreign minister, Julie Bishop, has told the ABC that she and the prime minister, Tony Abbott, had been in touch with their Indonesian counterparts and offered their assistance “should that be required”.
Bishop said that “the theory at present” was that the bad weather had caused the plane to crash, but the plane needed to be located before any of the questions that surround this incident could be answered.
10.05am AEST
Aviation journalist John Walton notes that Monday’s AirAsia flight QZ8501 has just taken off, as we near 24 hours since the disappearance of yesterday’s plane.
Today’s AirAsia flight #QZ8501 is airborne. I can only imagine what those crew and passengers are feeling. pic.twitter.com/6wb60I0JS3
9.20am AEST
AAP has spoken with an aviation expert, Geoffrey Thomas, who has speculated that QZ8501 may have been flying too slowly when it encountered bad weather conditions.
“Pilots believe that the crew, in trying to avoid the thunderstorm by climbing, somehow have found themselves flying too slow and thus induced an aerodynamic stall similar to the circumstances of the loss of Air France AF447 to crash in 2009,” Thomas told AAP.
The Air France AF447 crashed into the Atlantic Ocean in 2009 while en route from Rio De Janeiro to Paris.
Approximate last location of #QZ8501, plotted on weather image from @EarthUncutTV. pic.twitter.com/iHknp2AK8V
8.54am AEST
Michael Bachelard, of the Sydney Morning Herald, has this story of a 10-member extended family who missed boarding QZ8501 by only minutes.
But it was 9am local time before an airport official approached Christianawati and her big family and said the words she will never forget.
“This must have been the best Christmas gift your family ever received,” she recalls him saying. “The flight you were supposed to be on has crashed.”
8.49am AEST
We’re awaiting the resumption of the search for the missing flight, which Indonesian officials are suggesting will be found “quickly” if weather permits. In the meantime, here’s a timeline of how AirAsia QZ8501 vanished:
AirAsia’s flight QZ8501 took off from Juanda international airport in Surabaya, Indonesia’s second largest city, at 5.35am, shortly after sunrise on Sunday. The plane seated 180 but only 162 passengers were on board, allowing a few to stretch their legs into empty adjacent seats. The flight was scheduled to arrive in Singapore about three hours later. The sky was cloudy, the air warm.
Indonesian authorities said that, at 6.13am, the pilot - an Indonesian man named Iriyanto - contacted air traffic control in Jakarta with a request: the plane was cruising at 32,000ft over the Java sea and was approaching some nasty weather. Could he rise to 38,000ft to avoid a storm cloud?
8.38am AEST
My colleague Gwyn Topham has put together this profile of Tony Fernandes, the Malaysian tycoon who took over AirAsia in 2002:
A childhood dream, a little mentoring from Richard Branson and a 20p purchase took Malaysian entrepreneur Tony Fernandes to the helm of the pan-Asian budget airline at the heart of aviation’s latest mystery.
Born in Kuala Lumpur in 1964, Fernandes went to boarding school in Epsom, Surrey, before going on to study at the London School of Economics. He followed Branson’s own trajectory of beginning in the music industry, working for Virgin after graduation. In 2001, aged 37, he made his move into airlines by snapping up AirAsia, then a troubled, state-owned airline that had run up large debts, for one ringgit, or around 20p.
8.34am AEST
8.25am AEST
Here’s our latest report on the missing flight, from my colleagues Jonathan Kaiman and Alexandra Topping:
Hopes were fading on Sunday night for the safe return of 162 passengers aboard the missing AirAsia flight QZ8501 after the first day of the search was called off in Indonesia due to failing light and the government in Jakarta said it did not “dare to presume what [had] happened” to the aircraft.
In what appeared to be the third mysterious air tragedy to beset south-east Asian air travel this year, the Airbus 320-200 passenger jet took off from the Indonesian city of Surabaya for Singapore at 5.35amon Sunday, but lost all contact with air control at 6.17am.
8.18am AEST
Fernandes: flight’s disappearance “unbelievable”
8.11am AEST
Welcome to our live coverage of the search for Air Asia flight QZ8501, which disappeared on Sunday shortly after setting off from Surabaya, Indonesia, carrying 162 passengers.
The aircraft departed at 5.35am local time, but by 6.17am had lost all contact with air traffic control. It was about halfway to its destination, Singapore, and was encountering heavy storms.
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