Weeping relatives await news of the Air Asia missing plane at Juanda Airport, Surabaya, Indonesia, yesterday.
SURABAYA, Indonesia: More than 100 distraught relatives of passengers aboard missing Flight QZ8501 were hunkered down at a makeshift crisis centre at Indonesia’s Surabaya airport in East Java, waiting anxiously for news.
AirAsia Malaysia chief Tony Fernandes was at the airport himself trying to comfort the families, but the airline could offer little besides food, a hotel for the night and assurances that all was being done to find the lost plane.
“We’ve been given accommodation from AirAsia but I couldn’t rest with this on my mind,” said one man who gave his name as Haryanto and who has four relatives on board. He said he had been waiting at the airport for 10 hours.
Fernandes, a Premier League soccer club chairman and former Warner Music executive, addressed the relatives at a makeshift crisis centre set up in offices next to the terminal.
“Indonesian authorities are doing their best now for search and rescue, it’s best not to speculate,” he said. “Our first priority is to look after the families.”
Information on the fate of the plane that went missing is scant. The pilots asked to change course to avoid bad weather about midway through a journey from the provincial capital Surabaya to Singapore, but issued no distress call.
News came that the search for the Indonesia AirAsia Airbus 320-200 was called off at nightfall, to resume at first light.
Relatives wandered restlessly around the airport, where a notice board displayed the names of the missing passengers. On board were 155 Indonesians, three South Koreans and one each from Singapore, Malaysia and Britain, plus a French pilot. AirAsia is not used to crisis management, having not had a crash since it started operating in 2002.
The United States said yesterday it was ready to help search for an AirAsia plane that disappeared while traveling from Indonesia to Singapore, but that so far it had not been asked. The State Department said it was aware of the search and rescue operation under way being led by regional authorities, adding it “stands ready to assist in any way that’s helpful.”
The National Air Transportation Safety Board also said it was monitoring the situation and ready to aid the investigation if aske
Shortly before disappearing, AirAsia said the plane had asked permission from Jakarta air traffic control to deviate from its flight plan and climb above bad weather in an area noted for severe thunderstorms.
The aircraft was operated by AirAsia Indonesia, a unit of Malaysian-based AirAsia which dominates Southeast Asia’s booming low-cost airline market.
AirAsia’s flamboyant boss Tony Fernandes, a former record industry executive who acquired the then-failing airline in 2001, said he was on his way to Surabaya, where most of the passengers are from. “My only thought(s) are with the passengers and my crew,” he added on his Twitter page. With hard details few and far between, panicked relatives gathered at Singapore’s Changi airport. Indonesian Louis Sidartha, 25, told reporters her fiance was on board the flight.
They had taken separate flights from Surabaya to Singapore, and she said she only found out about the missing aircraft upon arriving in Singapore on a later flight.
In Surabaya hundreds of Indonesians descended on the terminal, hoping for news.
AirAsia said the missing jet last underwent maintenance on November 16. The company has never suffered a fatal accident.
An official from Indonesia’s transport ministry said the pilot asked to ascend by 6,000 feet to 38,000 feet to avoid heavy clouds.
“The plane is in good condition but the weather is not so good,” Djoko Murjatmodjo told a press conference at Jakarta’s airport, addressing reports of severe storms in the area where the jet went missing. Climbing to dodge large rain clouds is a standard procedure for aircraft in these conditions.
“What happens after that is a question mark,” according to Indonesian-based aviation analyst Dudi Sudibyo. The plane’s disappearance comes at the end of a disastrous year for Malaysian aviation. Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370, carrying 239 people, vanished in March after inexplicably diverting from its Kuala Lumpur-Beijing course.
No trace of it has been found. Another Malaysia Airlines plane went down in July in rebellion-torn eastern Ukraine, killing all 298 aboard. It was believed to have been hit by a surface-to-air missile.
While its rival Malaysia Airlines faces potential collapse after the two disasters this year, AirAsia this month confirmed its order of 55 A330-900neo passenger planes at a list price of $15bn.AFP
