|
 Indonesia AirAsia's Flight QZ8501, an Airbus A320-200, lost
contact with air traffic control early on Sunday during bad weather
on a flight from the Indonesian city of Surabaya to Singapore.
The navy said 40 bodies had been recovered. The plane has yet to be
found.
"My heart is filled with sadness for all the families involved in
QZ8501," airline boss Tony Fernandes tweeted. "On behalf of AirAsia,
my condolences to all. Words cannot express how sorry I am."
The airline said in a statement that it was inviting family members
to Surabaya, "where a dedicated team of care providers will be
assigned to each family to ensure that all of their needs are met".
Pictures of floating bodies were broadcast on television and
relatives of the missing already gathered at a crisis center in
Surabaya wept with heads in their hands. Several people collapsed in
grief and were helped away.
 "You have to be strong," the mayor of Surabaya, Tri Rismaharini,
said as she comforted relatives. "They are not ours, they belong to
God."
A navy spokesman said a plane door, oxygen tanks and one body had
been recovered and taken away by helicopter for tests.
"The challenge is waves up to three meters high," Fransiskus Bambang
Soelistyo, head of the Search and Rescue Agency, told reporters,
adding that the search operation would go on all night. He declined
to answer questions on whether any survivors had been found.
About 30 ships and 21 aircraft from Indonesia, Australia, Malaysia,
Singapore, South Korea and the United States have been involved in
the search.
The plane, which did not issue a distress signal, disappeared after
its pilot failed to get permission to fly higher to avoid bad
weather because of heavy air traffic, officials said.
It was traveling at 32,000 feet (9,753 meters) and had asked to fly
at 38,000 feet, officials said earlier.
Pilots and aviation experts said thunderstorms, and requests to gain
altitude to avoid them, were not unusual in that area.
The Indonesian pilot was experienced and the plane last underwent
maintenance in mid-November, the airline said.
The aircraft had accumulated about 23,000 flight hours in some
13,600 flights, according to Airbus.
Online discussion among pilots has centered on unconfirmed secondary
radar data from Malaysia that suggested the aircraft was climbing at
a speed of 353 knots, about 100 knots too slow, and that it might
have stalled.
CLUES WHEN THINGS GO WRONG
The plane, whose engines were made by CFM International, co-owned by
General Electric and Safran of France, lacked real-time engine
diagnostics or monitoring, a GE spokesman said.
[to top of second column] |
Such systems are mainly used on long-haul flights and can provide
clues to airlines and investigators when things go wrong. Three
airline disasters involving Malaysian-affiliated carriers in less
than a year have dented confidence in the country's aviation
industry and spooked travelers across the region.
Malaysian Airlines Flight MH370 went missing on March 8 on a trip
from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing with 239 passengers and crew on board
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.
Bizarrely, an AirAsia plane from Manila skidded off and overshot the
runway on landing at Kalibo in the central Philippines on Tuesday.
No one was hurt.
On board Flight QZ8501 were 155 Indonesians, three South Koreans,
and one person each from Singapore, Malaysia and Britain. The
co-pilot was French.
U.S. law enforcement and security officials said passenger and crew
lists were being examined but nothing significant had turned up and
the incident was regarded as an unexplained accident.
Indonesia AirAsia is 49 percent owned by Malaysia-based budget
carrier AirAsia.
The AirAsia group, including affiliates in Thailand, the Philippines
and India, had not suffered a crash since its Malaysian budget
operations began in 2002.
(Additional reporting by Fergus Jensen, Wilda Asmarini, Charlotte
Greenfield, Fransiska Nangoy, Cindy Silviana, Kanupriya Kapoor,
Michael Taylor, Nilufar Rizki and Siva Govindasamy in
JAKARTA/SURABAYA, Al-Zaquan Amer Hamzah and Praveen Menon in KUALA
LUMPUR, Saeed Azhar, Rujun Shen and Anshuman Daga in SINGAPORE, Jane
Wardell in SYDNEY, Tim Hepher in PARIS and Mark Hosenball, David
Brunnstrom and Lesley Wroughton in WASHINGTON; Writing by Dean Yates
and Robert Birsel; Editing by Nick Macfie)
[© 2014 Thomson Reuters. All rights
reserved.] Copyright 2014 Reuters. All rights reserved. This material may not be published,
broadcast, rewritten or redistributed. |
