AirAsia Indonesia Flight QZ8501 goes Missing

An AirAsia plane with 162 people on board, has lost control while flying over the Java Sea. The plane was going from Surabaya in Indonesia to Singapore. A massive search operation has been launched to locate the ill-fated flight, QZ8501.

The contact was lost about 42 minutes after the Airbus 320-200 took off from Indonesia’s Surabaya Airport. The plane had two pilots, five cabin crew and 155 passengers, including 16 children and one infant, AirAsia Indonesia said in a statement.

Nationalities of the passengers and crew include Singaporean, Malaysian, French, South Korean, and Indonesian. The plane lost contact soon after the Pilot was asked to increase altitude to avoid bad weather. We have received some unconfirmed reports of a wreckage being found in the Java Sea, which is yet to be verified.