Indonesia called off the air search for the night at
about 7 a.m. ET- according to an official with the country's search and rescue
agency and the search would resume at dawn tomorrow 29th Dec
2014. "We don't dare to presume
what has happened except that it has lost contact," said Djoko
Murjatmodjo, Indonesia's acting director general of transportation. Minutes
before the plane disappeared from radar, the pilot asked air traffic control
for permission to avoid a cloud bank by turning left and going higher, to
34,000 feet, Murjatmodjo said. "It's hard to say if 34,000 feet would have
been enough" Roys said. "We know the thunderstorms were very tall,
very high up. They could have encountered severe turbulence, strong wind sheer,
lightning and even icing at that altitude."
A statement puts that the plane has six Indonesian
crew, a French crew member and 155 passengers, including 16 children and one
infant. Among the passengers are three South Koreans, a Singaporean, a
Malaysian and a Briton. The rest are Indonesians, the statement said. At
Surabaya's Juanda International Airport, dozens of relatives sat in a room,
many talking on mobile phones, crying and looking dazed as the hours dragged on
without additional news. As word spread, more and more family members arrived
at the crisis center awaiting official announcement. Another Indonesian official is quoted as
saying that the plane is believed to have gone missing somewhere over the Java
Sea between Tanjung Pandan on Belitung island and Pontianak, on Indonesia's
part of Borneo island.
In its International fallout, Singapore's prime
minister, Lee Hsien Loong, tweeted his condolences. In Washington, White House
spokesman Eric Schultz said President Obama had briefed on the lost plane and
that " White House officials will continue to monitor the situation."
AirAsia, which has dominated cheap travel in the
region for years, has never lost a plane. The plane's captain reportedly had had
a total of 6,100 flying hours. The
plane, with registration number PK-AXC, had its last scheduled maintenance Nov.
16, airline officials said. Worldwide,
3,606 A320s are in operation, according to Airbus. Other newsagencies report that this is the
third major air incident for Southeast Asia this year. One would not forget MH370, the Malaysian
Airlines flight Boeing 777 that went missing soon after taking off from Kuala
Lumpur for Beijing. It remains missing with 239 people in one of the biggest
aviation mysteries. This year also saw another Boeing 777 also Malaysia Airliner
shot down at Ukraine when 298 people were killed.
Despite being the largest and most expensive search in
aviation history, there has been no confirmation of any flight debris,
resulting in many unofficial theories about its disappearance of MH 370.
With regards – S. Sampathkumar
28th Dec 2014. photo credit " wikipedia.org
