SURABAYA, Indonesia (AP) — An Indonesian helicopter saw two oily
spots in the search area for the missing AirAsia jetliner Monday, and
an Australian search plane spotted objects hundreds of miles away, but
it was too early to know whether either was connected to the aircraft
and its 162 passengers and crew.
In any case, officials saw little reason to believe AirAsia Flight 8501
met anything but a grim fate after it disappeared from radar Sunday
morning over the Java Sea.
"Based on the coordinates that we know, the evaluation would be that any
estimated crash position is in the sea, and that the hypothesis is the
plane is at the bottom of the sea," Indonesia search and rescue chief
Henry Bambang Soelistyo said.
The Airbus A320-200 vanished Sunday morning in airspace thick with storm
clouds on its way from Surabaya, Indonesia, to Singapore.
After the search expanded Monday, Jakarta's Air Force base commander
Rear Marshal Dwi Putranto said an Australian Orion aircraft had detected
"suspicious" objects near Nangka island, about 100 miles (160
kilometers) southwest of Pangkalan Bun, near central Kalimantan, or 700
miles (1,120 kilometers) from the location where the plane lost contact.
"However, we cannot be sure whether it is part of the missing AirAsia
plane," Putranto said. "We are now moving in that direction, which is in
cloudy conditions."
Air Force spokesman Rear Marshal Hadi Tjahnanto told MetroTV that an
Indonesian helicopter spotted two oily spots in the Java Sea east of
Belitung island. Unlike the Australian discovery, the oily spots were
within the search area, which stretches 60 kilometers (37 miles) around
the point where air-traffic controllers lost contact with the plane.
The last communication from the cockpit to air traffic control was a
request by one of the pilots to increase altitude from 32,000 feet
(9,754 meters) to 38,000 feet (11,582 meters) because of the rough
weather. Air traffic control was not able to immediately grant the
request because another plane was in airspace at 34,000 feet, said
Bambang Tjahjono, director of the state-owned company in charge of
air-traffic control.
By the time clearance could be given, Flight 8501 had disappeared,
Tjahjono said. The twin-engine, single-aisle plane, which never sent a
distress signal, was last seen on radar four minutes after the last
communication from the cockpit.
First Adm. Sigit Setiayana, the Naval Aviation Center commander at the
Surabaya air force base, said 12 navy ships, five planes, three
helicopters and a number of warships were taking part in the search,
along with ships and planes from Singapore and Malaysia. The Australian
Air Force also sent a search plane.
Searchers had to cope with heavy rain Sunday, but Setiayana said Monday
that visibility was good. "God willing, we can find it soon," he told
The Associated Press.
The plane's disappearance and suspected crash caps an astonishingly
tragic year for air travel in Southeast Asia, and Malaysia in
particular. Malaysia-based AirAsia's loss comes on top of the
still-unexplained disappearance of Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 in March
with 239 people aboard, and the downing of Malaysia Airlines Flight 17
in July over Ukraine, which killed all 298 passengers and crew.
"Until today, we have never lost a life," AirAsia group CEO Tony
Fernandes, who founded the low-cost carrier in 2001, told reporters in
Jakarta airport. "But I think that any airline CEO who says he can
guarantee that his airline is 100 percent safe, is not accurate."
Nearly all the passengers and crew are Indonesians, who are frequent visitors to Singapore, particularly on holidays.
Flight 8501 took off Sunday morning from Surabaya, Indonesia's
second-largest city, and was about halfway to Singapore when it vanished
from radar. The jet had been airborne for about 42 minutes.
Sunardi, a forecaster at Indonesia's Meteorology and Geophysics Agency,
said dense storm clouds were detected up to 13,400 meters (44,000 feet)
in the area at the time.
"There could have been turbulence, lightning and vertical as well as
horizontal strong winds within such clouds," said Sunardi, who like many
Indonesians uses only one name.
The plane had an Indonesian captain, Iryanto, who uses one name, and a
French co-pilot, five cabin crew members and 155 passengers, including
16 children and one infant, the airline said in a statement. Among the
passengers were three South Koreans, a Malaysian, a British national and
his 2-year-old Singaporean daughter. The rest were Indonesians.
AirAsia said the captain had more than 20,000 flying hours, of which
6,100 were with AirAsia on the Airbus 320. The first officer had 2,275
flying hours.
"Papa, come home, I still need you," Angela Anggi Ranastianis, the
captain's 22-year-old daughter pleaded on her Path page late Sunday,
which was widely quoted by Indonesian media. "Bring back my papa. Papa,
please come home."
At Iryanto's house in the East Java town of Sidoarjo, neighbors,
relatives and friends gathered Monday to pray and recite the Quran to
support the distraught family. Their desperate cries were so loud, they
could sometimes be heard outside where three LCD televisions had been
set up to monitor search developments.
"He is a good man. That's why people here appointed him as our
neighborhood chief for the last two years," said Bagianto Djoyonegoro, a
friend and neighbor.
Many recalled him as an experienced Air Force pilot who flew F-16 fighter jets before becoming a commercial airline pilot.
The missing aircraft was delivered to AirAsia in October 2008, and the
plane had accumulated about 23,000 flight hours during some 13,600
flights, Airbus said in a statement.
The aircraft had last undergone scheduled maintenance on Nov. 16, according to AirAsia.
The airline has dominated budget travel in Southeast Asia for years,
highlighting its low fares with the slogan, "Now everyone can fly." It
flies short routes of just a few hours, connecting the region's large
cities. Recently, it has tried to expand into long-distance flying
through sister airline AirAsia X.
The A320 family of jets, which includes the A319 and A321, has a good
safety record, with just 0.14 fatal accidents per million takeoffs,
according to a safety study published by Boeing in August.
