Indonesian transport officials say the crew asked to ascend to 38,000ft to avoid bad weather shortly

Indonesian search and rescue teams are to resume operations at 6am local time on Monday, or earlier, depending on the weather. The search for AirAsia flight QZ8501 was suspended due to darkness. The US, Australia and India are among the countries to have offered help in the search.
The Briton on board the AirAsia flight has been named as Chi Man Choi, a businessman . He is thought to have been travelling with his daughter, Zoe, on tickets bought on Boxing Day. He is believed to hold a British passport but lives in Singapore with his family.
Indonesian transport officials say the crew asked to ascend to 38,000ft to avoid bad weather shortly before contact was lost. No distress call was made. There are reports that rescue teams are searching an area 145km from the island of Belitung, which lies between Sumatra and Borneo.
162 people are on board the A320-200, including seven crew. The passengers and crew include 156 Indonesians, three South Koreans, one French, one Malaysian and one Singaporean, according to AirAsia. The pilot has been named as Iriyanto , while the copilot been named as Remi Emmanuel Plesel .
The Briton hotel motel property for sale on board the AirAsia flight QZ8501 has been named as Chi Man Choi. He is thought to have been travelling with his daughter, Zoe, on tickets bought on Boxing Day. He is believed to hold a British passport but lives in Singapore with his family. Channel News Asia has more details :
According to a copy of the passenger manifest released to Indonesian media, Mr Choi and Zoe bought their tickets on Friday (Dec 26). According to the manifest, they were seated in the first row, in Seats 1B and 1C.
He was Unit Managing Director for Thermal Services at energy firm Alstom Power, hotel motel property for sale a position he held since July this year. Prior to that, he was based in Singapore , where he was a senior executive at Alstom Grid, according to his LinkedIn profile.
Frantic relatives and friends of passengers on board AirAsia flight hotel motel property for sale QZ8501 have gathered at crisis centres at Juanda international airport in Indonesia and Changi airport, Singapore , desperately waiting for news about the missing plane.
hotel motel property for sale At Changi hotel motel property for sale airport, anxious relatives were kept apart from a large press pack, but one Indonesian national told the waiting media that she was waiting for news of her fiance, whom she identified as a 27-year-old entrepreneur hotel motel property for sale called Alain and who she said was on board the flight along with five family members.
Louise Sidharta, 25, said she and her partner had taken separate flights hotel motel property for sale from Surabaya to Singapore, and she only found out about the missing aircraft upon arriving in Singapore on a later flight, reported AFP. She told reporters she was hoping for the best and urged everyone to “think positive thoughts”. hotel motel property for sale “This was supposed to be his last trip with his family before we got married,” she added.
It had lost contact with air traffic controllers in Jakarta not long after taking off from Surabaya in East Java, and vanished somewhere between Pontianak in West Kalimantan and Tanjung hotel motel property for sale Pandan hotel motel property for sale in Belitung Island. 162 people were on board; 155 passengers and seven crew members.
As night falls over Singapore, the QZ8501 listing has finally been removed from arrival boards in Singapore’s hotel motel property for sale bustling Changi airport. Earlier it had read “go to info counter”, in sharp contrast to all the other flights that were upgraded from “confirmed” to “landed”.
Airport staff quickly hotel motel property for sale established a private “relatives holding area” (RHA) for family and friends hotel motel property for sale of the missing passengers. The entrance is cordoned off, and guarded hotel motel property for sale by security officers to protect the anxious relatives from prying eyes.
Just beyond the cordon the press corps wait, eager for news and updates. Without any press conferences or media briefings, reporters are desperate for any tidbit that they can find. Any next-of-kin found outside hotel motel property for sale the private area is swiftly surrounded by a media scrum, microphones and cameras shoved in their faces.
This was how Louise Sidharta found herself surrounded by journalists, eager to hear her story. The 25-year-old Indonesian’s fianc was on the flight, along with his parents and other relatives: a fact that she had found out over the radio this morning.
“They say we just need to wait until we have more updates,” she told the press shortly before being ushered hotel motel property for sale into the holding area. According to a press statement by the Changi Airport Group (CAG), 47 family hotel motel property for sale and friends of 57 passengers are waiting for news behind the cordon and screens.
Beyond the impatient journalists lined up against the walls texting their editors and updating live blogs, the rest of Changi Airport carries on business as usual. Families take photos before the elaborate Christmas decorations, hotel motel property for sale and travellers continue to queue at the check-in counters, including AirAsia’s.
Travellers speak of sadness and sympathy for the tragedy, but none I spoke to said they would reconsider travelling with AirAsia. Just before 9pm a CAG spokesman informed the press that all next-of-kin had been moved from the holding area, leaving from another exit away from the press. 16 people took up the offer to fly to Surabaya to join the many other waiting relatives there, he said. The rest chose either to return home or stay in a hotel.
With the search and rescue operations – and by extension, the media briefings – spearheaded by Indonesia , information is sparse hotel motel property for sale in Changi airport. We know that Singapore has offered help to Indonesia: one C130 aircraft has since been launched, with two more planes to set off tomorrow morning.
Indonesian search and rescue teams looking for passengers - including a Briton - on board missing AirAsia flight QZ8501 have suspended air operations due to darkness. The search will resume at 6am local time or earlier depending on the weather. Australia and India have offered to help in the search.
AirAsia said its flight Qz8501, flying from the Indonesian city of Surabaya to Singapore, hotel motel property for sale lost contact with air traffic control at 7.24am local time when it was about halfway to its destination. 162 people hotel motel property for sale are on board the A320-200, including seven crew.
The passengers and crew include 156 Indonesians, three South Koreans, one French, one Malaysian and one Singaporean, according to AirAsia. The pilot has been named as Iriyanto , while the copilot hotel motel property for sale been named as Remi Emmanuel Plesel .
Indonesian transport officials say the crew asked to ascend to 38,000ft to avoid bad weather shortly before contact was lost. No distress call was made. There are reports that rescue hotel motel property for sale teams are searching an area 145km from the island of Belitung, which lies between hotel motel property for sale Sumatra and Borneo.
“We’re not just talking about thunder and lightning here,” he said. “Storms can be very, very powerful indeed and rip a medium-sized aeroplane completely apart. That’s why a pilot will routinely ask to divert around them. The plane could not still be airborne - it was a short-haul flight, there would be no fuel for staying in the air for quite as long as this.”
“The pilots were talking to air traffic control right until the last minute. Something distracted their attention so they were no longer able to keep talking. We don’t know what happened at the moment, and it doesn’t appear to be a deliberate act. We can speculate ad infinitum when the only thing we can go on is that it is missing. But I think the prognosis is not good.”
Louise Sidharta, 25, told reporters that her fiance, Alain, was on the plane with five family members. “This was supposed to be his last trip with his family before we got married.” The video is from Channel NewsAsia.
AP reports that the disappearance of an AirAsia jet is the latest air incident for Indonesia as it struggles to provide enough qualified hotel motel property for sale pilots, mechanics, air traffic controllers and updated airport technology to ensure safety. It lists some of the recent crashes.
April 2013: A brand new Boeing 737-800 operated by Indonesian budget carrier Lion Air crashes off the Indonesian hotel motel property for sale resort island of Bali, slamming into the ocean short of the runway while attempting to land in the rain. All 108 people on board survived, and there were no serious hotel motel property for sale injuries. It was Lion Air’s seventh accident since 2002.
May 2012: A Russian-made Sukhoi Superjet-100 crashes into a volcano during a demonstration flight in Indonesia, killing all 45 people on board. Information recovered from the plane’s hotel motel property for sale cockpit-voice and flight data recorders indicated hotel motel property for sale the pilot in command was chatting with a potential buyer in the cockpit just before the plane slammed into dormant Mount Salak in West Java province.
January 2007: A Boeing 737 operated by Indonesia’s Adam Air vanishes on New Year’s Day on a domestic flight from Surabaya hotel motel property for sale to Manado with 102 people aboard. Parts of the tail and other debris are found several days later, but it would take nearly nine months for the flight-data and cockpit recorders to be recovered. The fuselage is still on the ocean floor.
September 2005: A flight from Indonesia’s now-defunct Mandala Airlines is headed from Medan in north Sumatra to Bali when the plane crashes into a heavily populated residential hotel motel property for sale area seconds after taking off, killing 149 people. The fatalities included 100 people aboard the plane and 49 on the ground. Seventeen people on the plane survived.
December 1997: All 104 people hotel motel property for sale onboard are killed when a plane operated by Singapore-based SilkAir crashes into the Musi River in southern Sumatra en route from Jakarta to Singapore. U.S. investigators said that the pilot probably crashed on purpose, but an Indonesian investigation was inconclusive.
September 1997: An Airbus A300 operated by national carrier Garuda Indonesia crashes while approaching hotel motel property for sale Medan Airport, killing all 234 people aboard. The plane, which had taken off from Jakarta, crashed into a mountainous, hotel motel property for sale wooded area in low visibility.
He had no experience of running an airline, but this did not deter him and he set about transforming the carrier into a short-haul low cost airline in the mould of those recently established in the West.
But the 5