It is a dismal and tragic year for Malaysian aviation. If I were superstitious 2014 would be a cursed year.
After MH30 and MH17, Air Asia’s QZ8501 has gone missing on its way from Surabaya to Singapore. AirAsia is a Malaysian low-cost airline headquartered near Kuala Lumpur.
UPDATE: QZ8501 is believed to have crashed at the location 03.22.46 South and 108.50.07 East, in waters around 80 to 100 nautical miles from Belitung. Not confirmed.
Indonesia’s air force was searching for an AirAsia plane carrying 162 people that went missing on Sunday after the pilots asked to change course to avoid bad weather during a flight from the Indonesian city of Surabaya to Singapore.
Indonesia AirAsia Flight QZ8501, an Airbus 320-200, lost contact with Jakarta air traffic control at 6:17 a.m. (6.17 p.m. EST), officials said.
“The aircraft was on the submitted flight plan route and was requesting deviation due to enroute weather before communication with the aircraft was lost,” the airline said in a statement.
No distress signal had been sent, said Joko Muryo Atmodjo, air transportation director at Indonesia’s transport ministry. Indonesia AirAsia said there were 155 passengers and seven crew on board. It said 156 were Indonesian, with three from South Korea and one each from Singapore, Malaysia and France.
The k2p blog 