file photo: Wikimedia
The search resumed at daybreak Monday for the AirAsia Indonesia A320 that disappeared from radar above the Java Sea early Sunday morning. So far, several sightings of floating debris and oil slicks in the region have been checked out and found not to be associated with the jet. Government officials said the search will expand on Tuesday to four additional areas. “Our early conjecture is that the plane is in the bottom of the sea,” said Bambang Sulistyo, the head of the search and rescue effort. That belief is based on the plane’s flight track and last known coordinates, according to CNN. So far, no signals have been detected from the jet’s emergency location transmitter. There were 162 people on board.
The crew had just asked for a weather diversion and a climb from 32,000 to 38,000 feet (the route change was approved, the climb was not) at 6:18 a.m. local time on Sunday, when voice, then radar, then ADS-B signals from the aircraft stopped. Cloud tops in the area at the time were higher than 40,000 feet. The captain in command of the flight, a citizen of Indonesia, had a total of 20,537 flying hours, of which 6,100 hours were with AirAsia on the A320, according to AirAsia. The first officer, who has been identified in news reports as a French citizen, had a total of 2,275 flying hours with AirAsia Indonesia. The airplane had departed from Surabaya, Indonesia, en route to Singapore. The low-cost airline is well-funded and fast-growing, and has a good safety record, according to Time. This is the airline’s first loss of an aircraft.
