An AirAsia plane with 161 people aboard lost contact with ground control on Sunday after takeoff from Indonesia on the way to Singapore, and search and rescue operations were under way.
The plane lost communication with Jakarta’s air traffic control at 07:24, about an hour before it was scheduled to land in Singapore, the Singapore Civil Aviation Authority said in a statement. The contact was lost about 42 minutes after takeoff from Indonesia’s Surabaya airport, Hadi Mustofa, an official of the transportation ministry told Indonesia’s MetroTV.
A jet flying from Surabaya, Indonesia, to Singapore with 162 people aboard lost contact with air traffic control about an hour before it was to land and is missing, Airline officials said Sunday. AirAsia said in a statement that the plane was an Airbus A320-200 and that search and rescue operations were in progress.
The plane had six crew and 155 passengers, including 16 children and one infant, the general manager of Surabaya’s Juanda airport, Trikora Raharjo, told The Associated Press.
There were six foreigners ? three South Koreans including an infant and one each from Singapore, British and Malaysia, said Raharjo. The rest were Indonesians, he said.
The plane lost contact when it was believed to be over the Java Sea between Kalimantan and Java islands, Mustofa said.
He said the weather in the area was cloudy.
The Singapore aviation authority said it was informed about the missing plane by Jakarta ground control about half an hour after the contact was lost.
“Search and rescue operations have been activated by the Indonesian authorities,” it said, adding that the Singapore air force and the navy also were activated with two C-130 planes.
The captain, identified in those documents as Capt. Iriyanto, had a total of 6,100 flying hours. The first officer a total of 2,275 flying hours, said AirAsia, a low-cost regional airline, based in Sepang, Malaysia, near Kuala Lumpur.
This is the third major air incident for Southeast Asia 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 with 239 people in one of the biggest aviation mysteries.
? On July 17, 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. A total of 298 people on board were killed.
Source: persecondnews
