AirAsia Flight Missing

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In what has been nothing short of a terrible year for air travel, another commercial passenger plane has seemingly gone missing.
The AirAsia Flight QZ8501, an Airbus A320-200, was carrying over 160 passengers onboard, and was going to Singapore from Surabaya (Indonesia).
The plane lost contact over the Java Sea, and a search and rescue operation has been put into place by AirAsia. BBC News 24 recently confirmed that if the plane was still airborne at this time, it would aircraft would have run out of fuel.

Sources:
BBC: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-30614627
BBC News 24: http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/live/bbcnews (this feed may not work outside of the UK)
AirAsia Twitter: https://twitter.com/airasia

Original article the above is from, some information not on the article taken from BBC News 24 live broadcast.

AirAsia flight QZ8501 from Indonesia to Singapore missing

An AirAsia flight travelling from the Indonesian city of Surabaya to Singapore has lost contact with air traffic control, the company has said.

Indonesian media say more than 160 people were on board the Airbus A320-200.

The aircraft, flight number QZ8501, lost contact with air traffic control at 07:24 (00:24 GMT), AirAsia tweeted.

The company said that search and rescue operations were under way for the missing plane.

An official with the transport ministry, Hadi Mustofa, told local media the plane lost contact over the Java Sea, which lies between Surabaya and Singapore.

He said the plane had asked for an unusual route before it lost contact.

AirAsia have given few other details.

"At the present time we unfortunately have no further information regarding the status of the passengers and crew members on board, but we will keep all parties informed as more information becomes available," a company statement said.

[Geo Ghost]

Very shocking and sad to here of another incident.

Thing is, if they plane has gone down, what will have caused it?
And will they manage to find the wreckage of this one? If not... We all know the conspiracy theories will errupt.

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Well, I've just woke up after 7 hours, fully expecting the aircraft to have been found, but alas. It is still missing, nothing of it has been found. What a worrying year this has been.
AirAsia is a Malaysian carrier, Malaysia is certainly having a dreadful year in regards to air travel.


Out of interest, who pays for rescue operations aided by foreign countries? Is the bill footed by the country, the country the aircraft was registered to, or is there some international pool of money it is taken from? I assume all the searching that it costs to find a plane like QZ8501 or MH370 is far from cheap, and probably runs into the many millions. I know Australia has spent thousands upon thousands of man hours, and put a lot of their fleet into searching for MH370, and Tony Abbott has offered the same sort of assistance in locating QZ8501.

FOX for some reason are using 3 differing planes on its diagrams of the A320.

[Chris]

I think the money for the search and rescue operations usually comes out of the military budget of each country. I'm fairly sure that foreign help is provided free of charge, on the understanding that if you had a similar incident other people would help you.

[YNM]

QZ is the code for Indonesia AirAsia, not just AirAsia or such.

Cause of crash : most likely to be weather. Crosswinds and bad clouds...

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QZ is the code for Indonesia AirAsia, not just AirAsia or such.

Yes, it was operated by an affiliate, Indonesia AirAsia. But everywhere is just referring to it as AirAsia.

I was watching BBC News 24 earlier, and an aviation expert came on and, very bluntly, stated "It's at the bottom of the ocean, from the coordinates and weather, its the only place it could be, bottom of the ocean".
The Air Force found an oil slick on the ocean, but they currently have no idea if its from a ship or a plane.

[Geo Ghost]

Debris has now been found along with bodies.

Although it's not confirmed to be the airliner, I dare say it probably is

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Indeed. It seems "at the bottom of the sea" turned out to be far more accurate than people had hoped. Another tragedy on the airlines to end 2014, not sure if its just recieved more media attention than of years prior, or if this year has genuinely been as terrible compared to others as we may think, not including MH17 which was of course a unique and thankfully rare situation.

[JamieLei]

QZ is the code for Indonesia AirAsia, not just AirAsia or such.

Yes, it was operated by an affiliate, Indonesia AirAsia. But everywhere is just referring to it as AirAsia.

That may be the case when considering marketing, but when it comes to something like the management of safety, a subsidiary cannot necessarily be compared to its parent company. Would you think Virgin Trains are unsafe since a Virgin Atlantic jet had to make an emergency landing yesterday? Or that Sun-Air of Scandinavia has the same safety record as British Airways?

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To clarify, I was referring to the media as in the news. Not marketing.

[JamieLei]

To clarify, I was referring to the media as in the news. Not marketing.

That was more in your assertion that AirAsia is a Malaysian carrier, and therefore implying a connection in the safety standards of Malaysia Airlines and AirAsia Indonesia.

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It seems the transport minister for Indonesia has released the official stance / report on the incident.

It climbed too fast, causing it to stall and fall into the Java Sea.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-30902237

[audigex]

FOX for some reason are using 3 differing planes on its diagrams of the A320.

I especially like how it acquires two extra engines when banking.

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Some of you may remember this, back in December last year shortly after Christmas, an AirAsia flight from Surabaya to Singapore disappeared over the Java Sea. After a year long investigation, the findings have been released in a report.

The report pointed the finger towards a plane fault, the rudder control failed four times over the ill fated journey, an issue that had also occured at least 23 times the preceeding year. The report also says the pilots response to the fault did not help the situation, and indeed contributed to the end result. The Airbus A320-200 had a cracked soldering joint in the system that controlled rudder related functions, causing it to send warnings to the pilots. The crew attempted to fix the problem by resetting the onboard computer systems, which disabled the autopilot. Control of the plane was lost, and it entered a prolonged stall state which was beyond recovery by the flight crew. The stormy weather, which at the time was thought to be involved, was not a factor in the accident. The plane came down in the Java Sea, near Borneo. There were 162 on board, with only 106 bodies being found to date.

The report also mentions
- Inadequacies in the maintenance system led to "unresolved repetitive faults occurring with shorter intervals"
- There appeared to be miscommunication between the pilot and co-pilot - at one point, the pilot commanded "pull down" but the plane was ascending
- At another point, the two men appeared to be pushing their controls in opposite directions

As the issue with its rudder control had popped up many times on the same aircraft in the past, AirAsia will no doubt have a hard time answering why the aircraft was not better maintained to prevent the issue that was occuring with greater frequency between incidents.

Source: BBC News