AirAsia plane with 162 on board missing en route to Singapore
AirAsia plane goes missing
Rescuers scoured the Java Sea for an AirAsia plane carrying 162 people which went missing in bad weather Sunday en route from Indonesia to Singapore, the third crisis for a Malaysian carrier this year.
Air traffic controllers lost contact with the Airbus A320-200 around an hour after it left Juanda international airport at Surabaya in east Java, at 5:20am (2220 GMT Saturday).
It was scheduled to arrive in Singapore at 8:30am (0030 GMT).
Shortly before disappearing, the plane asked permission from Jakarta air traffic control to deviate from its flight plan and climb above bad weather in an area noted for severe thunderstorms.
The pilots requested "deviation due to enroute weather before communication with the aircraft was lost while it was still under the control of the Indonesian Air Traffic Control", AirAsia said in a statement on its Facebook page.
The airline said 156 of those on board Flight QZ8501 were Indonesians, with three South Koreans and one person each from Singapore, Malaysia and France.
There were 138 adult passengers, 16 children and an infant, in addition to five cabin crew and the pilot and co-pilot, who is believed to be French.
The Indonesian air force said two of its planes had been sent to scour an area of the Java Sea, southwest of Pangkalan Bun in Kalimantan province -- around halfway along the flight's expected route.
"The weather is cloudy and the area is surrounded by sea. We are still on our way so we won't make an assumption on what happened to the plane," said air force spokesman Hadi Cahyanto.
A Singaporean C-130 military transport aircraft was also on the way to the area, after Indonesia accepted help from its Southeast Asian neighbour.
© flightradar24.com
Contact lost with AirAsia plane
Anxiety builds
The twin-engine aircraft was operated by AirAsia Indonesia, a unit of Malaysian-based AirAsia which dominates Southeast Asia's booming low-cost airline market.
AirAsia's flamboyant boss Tony Fernandes, a former record industry executive who acquired the then-failing airline in 2001, said he was on his way to Surabaya, where most of the passengers are from.
"My only thought (sic) are with the passengers and my crew," he added on his Twitter page.
With hard details few and far between, panicked relatives gathered at Singapore's Changi airport.
In Surabaya hundreds of Indonesians descended on the terminal, hoping for news of the missing jet.
A 45-year-old woman told AFP that she had six family members on the plane.
"They were going to Singapore for a holiday," she said.
"They have always flown with AirAsia and there was no problem. I am shocked to hear the news, and I am very worried that the plane might have crashed."
Indonesia, a vast archipelago with poor land transport infrastructure, has seen an explosive growth in low-cost air travel over recent years.
But the air industry has been blighted by poor safety standards in an area that also experiences extreme weather.
AirAsia said the missing jet last underwent maintenance on November 16. The company has never suffered a fatal accident.
It swiftly replaced its distinctive bright red logo with a grey background on its social media pages.
An official from Indonesia's transport ministry said the pilot asked to ascend by 6,000 feet to 38,000 feet to avoid heavy clouds.
"The plane is in good condition but the weather is not so good," Djoko Murjatmodjo told a press conference at Jakarta's airport, addressing reports of severe storms in the area where the jet went missing.
Climbing to dodge large rain clouds is a standard procedure for aircraft in these conditions.
"There is nothing wrong to do that. What happens after that is a question mark," according to Indonesian-based aviation analyst Dudi Sudibyo.
Malaysia and Australia joined aircraft manufacturer Airbus in pledging help in the investigation.
The White House said US President Barack Obama had been briefed on the disappearance and it was monitoring the situation.
The plane's disappearance comes at the end of a disastrous year for Malaysian aviation.
Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370, carrying 239 people, vanished in March after inexplicably diverting from its Kuala Lumpur-Beijing course. No trace of it has been found.
Another Malaysia Airlines plane went down in July in rebellion-torn eastern Ukraine, killing all 298 aboard. It was believed to have been hit by a surface-to-air missile.
AirAsia has seen spectacular success and aggressive growth under Fernandes' low-cost, low-overheads model.
While its rival Malaysia Airlines faces potential collapse after the two disasters this year, AirAsia this month confirmed its order of 55 A330-900neo passenger planes at a list price of $15 billion.
liberalism + Socialism = Terrorism
Thanks for your Support
© All copyrights reserved By Patcnews
liberalism + Socialism = Terrorism
September 8, 2014 Last updated at 03:40 ET
Missing Malaysia plane MH370: What we know
Almost six months
on, mystery continues to surround the fate of Malaysia Airlines flight
MH370, which disappeared en route from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing on 8
March.
Investigators carrying out the search are now focusing on a refined area covering 60,000 sq km 1,800km (1,100 miles) off the west coast of Australia.
Based
on the most recent analysis of satellite data, the plane is believed to
have ended its journey in seas far west of the Australian city of
Perth.
Over the last few months, the Australian authorities have been conducting an underwater depth survey of the latest search area.
This part of the investigation is aimed at gathering crucial data to map the ocean floor, charting its contours, depths and hardness, of which there is limited knowledge.
This in turn should allow investigators to conduct the intensified underwater search, expected to begin this month.
This next phase involves the use contracted vessels fitted with specialist deep tow survey systems scanning for the missing plane.
What time did the plane disappear? 00:41, 8 March: Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370 departed from Kuala Lumpur International Airport on Saturday, 8 March (16:41 GMT, 7 March), and was due to arrive in Beijing at 06:30 (22:30 GMT).
Malaysia Airlines says the plane lost contact less than an hour after takeoff. No distress signal or message was sent.
01:07: The plane sent its last ACARS transmission - a service that allows computers aboard the plane to "talk" to computers on the ground. Some time afterwards, it was silenced and the expected 01:37 transmission was not sent.
01:19: The last communication
between the plane and Malaysian air traffic control took place about 12
minutes later. At first, the airline said initial investigations
revealed the co-pilot had said "All right, good night".
However, Malaysian authorities later confirmed the last words heard from the plane, spoken either by the pilot or co-pilot, were in fact "Good night Malaysian three seven zero".A few minutes later, the plane's transponder, which communicates with ground radar, was shut down as the aircraft crossed from Malaysian air traffic control into Vietnamese airspace over the South China Sea.
01:21: The Civil Aviation Authority of Vietnam said the plane failed to check in as scheduled with air traffic control in Ho Chi Minh City.
02:15: Malaysian military radar plotted Flight MH370 at a point south of Phuket island in the Strait of Malacca, west of its last known location. Thai military radar logs also confirmed that the plane turned west and then north over the Andaman sea.
In maps accompanying its 1 May report, the Malaysian government revised the time to be 02:22 and put the position further west.
02:28: (18:28 GMT, 8 March) After the loss of radar, a satellite above the Indian Ocean picked up data from the plane in the form of seven automatic "handshakes" between the aircraft and a ground station. The first was at 02:28 local time.
08:19: (00:19 GMT) However, there is some evidence of a further "partial handshake" at this time between the plane and a ground station. This was a request from the aircraft to to log on. Investigators say this is consistent with the plane's satellite communication equipment powering up after an outage - such as after an interruption to its electrical supply.
09:15: (01:15 GMT) This would have been the next scheduled automatic contact between the ground station and the plane but there was no response from the aircraft.
But evidence from a military radar, revealed later, suggested the plane had suddenly changed from its northerly course to head west. So the search, involving dozens of ships and planes, then switched to the sea west of Malaysia.
Further evidence revealed on Saturday 15 March by the Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak suggested the jet was deliberately diverted by someone on board about an hour after takeoff.
After MH370's last communication with a satellite was disclosed, a week after the plane's disappearance, the search was expanded dramatically to nearly three million square miles, from Kazakhstan in the north to vast areas of the remote southern Indian Ocean.
At 1400 GMT on 24 March the Malaysian prime minister announced that following further analysis of satellite data it was beyond doubt that the plane had gone down in this part of the ocean.
This was based on Inmarsat and UK air accident investigators' analysis of the data relayed between the plane and ground station by satellite.
More potential debris was spotted by satellites but on 28 March the main search area was moved 1,100km (684 miles) to the north-east and closer to Australia, following further analysis of the speed of the plane and its maximum range.
Malaysian officials said that the debris could still be consistent with the new search area as ocean currents may have moved floating objects. However, no debris has yet been verified as being from the plane.
On 5-8 April, Australian and Chinese vessels using underwater listening equipment detected ultrasonic signals, which officials believed could be from the plane's "black box" flight recorders. The pings appeared to be the most promising lead so far, and were used to define the area of a sea-floor search, conducted by the Bluefin-21 submersible robot.
But Australian officials announced on 29 May that the search had found nothing and the area where the signals were heard could be ruled out as the final resting place of the plane. Efforts would now focus on reviewing data, surveying the sea floor and bringing in specialist equipment, the Joint Agency Co-ordination Centre (JACC) said.
Meanwhile, Malaysian authorities, assisted by international aviation and satellite experts, continue their attempts to piece together the plane's final hours and explain what happened to its 239 passengers and crew.
Australian officials believe the plane was flying on autopilot when it crashed.
On 26 June, officials announced a new 60,000 sq km search area some 1,800 km west of Perth. The operation will begin in August with detailed mapping of the sea bed.
This should enable a metre-by-metre underwater search using towed instruments and submersibles.
In August, Australia's Deputy Prime Minister Warren Truss said that areas on the southern part of the refined search field in the Indian Ocean were "of particular interest and priority".
Fugro Survey, the Dutch company contracted by the Australian authorities to lead the deep sea investigation, anticipates this search to take up to twelve months.
Muhammad Razahan Zamani (bottom right),
24, and his wife Norli Akmar Hamid, 33, were on their honeymoon on the
missing flight. The phone is being held by his stepsister, Arni Marlina
Police have searched their homes and a flight simulator has been taken from the captain's home and reassembled for examination at police headquarters.
There were 227 passengers, including 153 Chinese and 38 Malaysians, according to the manifest. Seven were children.
Other passengers came from Iran, the US, Canada, Indonesia, Australia, India, France, New Zealand, Ukraine, Russia, Taiwan and the Netherlands.
Two Iranian men were found to be travelling on false passports. But further investigation revealed 19-year-old Pouria Nour Mohammad Mehrdad and Delavar Seyed Mohammadreza, 29 were headed for Europe via Beijing, and had no apparent links to terrorist groups.
Among the Chinese nationals was a delegation of 19 prominent artists who had attended an exhibition in Kuala Lumpur.
Malaysia Airlines said there were four passengers who checked in for the flight but did not show up at the airport.
The family members of those on board were informed in person, by phone and by text message on 24 March that the plane had been lost.
LLC 501C- 4 UCC 1-308.ALL RIGHTS RESERVED WITHOUT PREJUDICE
Content and Programming Copyright 2014 By Patcnews The Patriot Conservative News Tea Party Network © LLC UCC 1-308.ALL RIGHTS RESERVED WITHOUT PREJUDICE All copyrights reserved By Patcnews The Patriot Conservative News Tea Party Network Copyright 2014 CQ-Roll Call, Inc. All materials herein are protected by United States copyright law and may not be reproduced, distributed, transmitted, displayed, published or broadcast without the prior written permission of CQ-Roll Call. You may not alter or remove any trademark, copyright or other notice from copies of the content. © All Copyrights reserved By Patcnews The Patriot Conservative News Tea Party Network
No comments:
Post a Comment