How AirAsia Flight QZ8501 Disappeared – The sudden disappearance of AirAsia Flight QZ8501 in Indonesian airspace has fueled a host of questions:
What happened exactly?
Below are some basic facts about Flight 8501’s journey before it lost contact with air traffic control.
How AirAsia Flight QZ8501 Disappeared over Java Sea
- The Airbus A320-200 took off from the Indonesian city of Surabaya at 5:36 a.m. local time Sunday with 155 passengers and 7 crew members on board. Its destination was Singapore, a journey that usually takes a little over two hours.
- At 6:12 a.m., one of the pilots asked air traffic control permission to turn and climb to a higher altitude to try avoid bad weather, according to Indonesian officials.
- Minutes later, the plane disappeared from air traffic control’s radar.
- At 7:55 a.m., Flight 8501 was officially declared missing. Its last known position was over the Java Sea, between the islands of Belitung and Borneo.
- The majority of those on board the plane are Indonesian. There are also people from South Korea, Britain, France, Malaysia and Singapore.
Djoko Murjatmodjo, an aviation official at the Indonesian Transport Ministry, suggested that Flight 8501 ascended despite air traffic control denying it permission.