The Indonesia AirAsia flight that went missing on Sunday about half way between its origin of Surabaya in Indonesia and its destination of Singapore, had requested to fly at 38,000 feet up from 32,000 feet to avoid clouds, an Indonesian transport official said.
Joko Muryo Atmodjo, air transportation director at the Transport Ministry, told a news conference that the aircraft was between the Indonesian port of Tanjung Pandan and the town of Pontianak, in West Kalimantan on Borneo island, when it went missing.
The Airbus A320-200, disappeared after its pilot failed to get permission to fly higher to avoid bad weather during a flight from the Indonesian city of Surabaya to Singapore on Sunday.
“Based on our coordinates, we expect it is in the sea, so for now (we think) it is on the sea floor,” Soelistyo, head of Indonesia’s search and rescue agency, told reporters when asked about the missing plane’s likely location.
The plane is presumed to have crashed off the Indonesian coast, Soelistyo said on Monday, as countries around Asia sent ships and planes to help in the search effort.
A senior Indonesian civil aviation source told Reuters that authorities had the flight’s radar data and were waiting for search and rescue teams to find debris before they started their investigation into the cause of the accident.
Onboard Flight QZ8501 were 155 Indonesians, three South Koreans, and one person each from Singapore, Malaysia and Britain. The co-pilot was French.
The incident caps a disastrous year for Malaysia-affiliated airlines, with Indonesia AirAsia 49 percent owned by Malaysia-based budget carrier AirAsia.
Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370 went missing on March 8 on a trip from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing with 239 passengers and crew and has not been found. On July 17, the same airline’s Flight MH17 was shot down over Ukraine, killing all 298 people on board.
- the-star.co.ke
