AirAsia Indonesia regrets to confirm that a flight QZ8501 from Surabaya to Singapore has lost contact with air traffic control at 07:24 hrs this morning.
The Airbus 320-200 with registration number PK-AXC had 155 passengers and crew on board – 149 Indonesians, one Singaporean, one British, one Malaysian and three Koreans and it also had seven crew members – according to Indonesia’s Transport Ministry.
“We are coordinating with rescue team and looking for its position. We believe it is somewhere between Tanjung Pandan, a town on Belitung island, and Kalimantan,” Indonesia’s air transportation director-general Djoko Murjatmodjo said.
At this time, search and rescue operations are in progress and AirAsia is cooperating fully and assisting the rescue service.
Airforce spokesman Marsma Hadi Tjahjanto confirmed that the air force was using the last point of contact to conduct an air search.
“The weather was not good – it was bad — at the estimated location the plane lost contact. We just received a weather report from the national meteorological, geophysics and climatology agency,” said Hadi.
