AirAsia plane with 162 passengers goes missing over Indonesian waters

An air plane belonging to AirAsia has been reported missing.The plane which lost contact with ground control had about 162 people on board.
The single-aisle Airbus A320-200 had an Indonesian captain and a French co-pilot, five cabin crew and 155 passengers, including 16 children and one infant, AirAsia Indonesia said in a statement. Among the passengers were three South Koreans and one each from Singapore and Malaysia. The rest were Indonesians.


The plane lost contact when it was believed to be over the Indonesian  Java Sea between Kalimantan and Java islands.
 Sunardi, a weather forecaster at the Indonesia's Meteorology and Geophysics Agency , told the Associated Press that dense storm clouds were detected up to 44,000 feet in the same area at the time the plane was reported to have lost contact.
"There could have been turbulence, lightning and vertical as well as horizontal strong winds within such clouds," he said.
 
Search operations were deployed at the location where the plane lost contact.
Bangka Tribune news reported that a loud bang was reportedly heard by fishermen over Belitung Island at around 07:00 to 08:00 in the morning.
However, the fishermen could not ascertain the source of the explosion and assumed that the bang came from within a five-mile radius between Coconut Island and Bird Bath Beach, Damar.

The fishermen who were at sea engaged in their regular fishing activities near Coconut Island also claim that the explosion was quite powerful.
The Airbus 320 aircraft, from the Indonesian city of Surabaya was scheduled to land in Singapore at 8:30am Singapore time.