'Not Again': AirAsia Plane Disappears, Months After MH370 Went Missing

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Another Asian airliner has gone missing: AirAsia flight QZ8501 lost contact with air traffic control at 7:24 a.m. local time on Sunday, AirAsia reported about four hours after the plane disappeared en route to Singapore.

(For context for American readers, flight QZ8501 disappeared at 7:24 p.m. EST on Saturday in the United States.)

AirAsia is a private airline based in Malaysia, and the country already has suffered two major aviation catastrophes this year.

In March 2014, Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 lost contact with air traffic control when it was about several hundred miles north of Singapore. Rescuers still have been unable to find any traces of flight MH370, or its 239 passengers and crew, despite an unprecedented search effort.

In April 2014, or one month after MH370 went missing, AirAsia’s CEO was forced to apologize after the company’s in-flight magazine suggested that AirAsia’s own well-trained pilots would never lose a plane.

AirAsia was forced to apologize for this article in its in-flight magazine, after MH370 went missing.

AirAsia said the magazine was printed before MH370 disappeared, and was not intended as a commentary on its rival airline.

In July 2014, Malaysia Airline flight MH17 was shot down over Ukraine, killing nearly 300 passengers and crew.

Details on AirAsia Flight QZ8501
Sunday’s missing AirAsia flight was traveling between Surabaya, in Indonesia, and Singapore. There were 155 passengers and seven crew on board the Airbus A320-200, officials have said.

The plane was operated by Indonesia AirAsia, a joint venture with Air Asia proper. (The company has several affiliates, including AirAsia India and AirAsia X.) Indonesia AirAsia has a fleet of 30 Airbus A320s.

An AirAsia official told the media on Sunday that the plane had requested “an unusual route” before air traffic control lost contact with QZ8501 over the Java Sea. However, an Indonesia Transport Ministry spokesperson later clarified that the pilot’s request was permission to change altitude due to bad weather, Steve Herman reported for the Voice of America.

“At the present time we unfortunately have no further information,” according to AirAsia’s statement. “At this time, search and rescue operations are in progress and AirAsia is cooperating fully and assisting the rescue service.”

After releasing its statement to reporters, AirAsia immediately changed the appearance of its various social media accounts. On AirAsia’s Facebook account, for instance, the company swapped out its usual bright red logo in favor of a muted gray logo, and changed the background of its Facebook from a festive holiday theme to a shrouded, all-black bar.

Malaysians were “shocked” by the news of a third potential lost airliner this year, the Malaysian Insider reported, and tens of thousand of people around the globe took to social media to express their surprise and sorrow.

“Another plane went missing,” one Malaysian tweeted. “Ya Allah not again.”

“Pray for QZ8501.”

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Malaysia says no evidence that missing jet 'flew on for four hours'

MALAYSIAN OFFICIALS DENY THAT MISSING BOEING 777 JET TRANSMITTED ENGINE DATA FOUR HOURS AFTER IT LOST RADIO CONTACT

Malaysia's acting Transport Minister Hishammuddin Hussein, centre, during a news conference Photo: Edgar Su/Reuters

By Malcolm Moore, Beijing

1:16PM GMT 13 Mar 2014

Officials investigating the disappearance of Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 said there was no evidence the jet had flown for hours after losing contact with air traffic control.

Earlier, unnamed United States investigators told the Wall Street Journal that they believed the Boeing 777 flew for a total of five hours, based on data automatically transmitted by its twin Rolls-Royce Trent engines.

If true, that would widen the search zone for the missing plane by more than 2,000 nautical miles, an area stretching from India to Australia.

"Those reports are inaccurate," said Hishammuddin Hussein, the Malaysian Transport minister. "The last transmission from the aircraft was at 1.07am which indicated that everything was normal."

Shortly afterwards at 1.30am, the Beijing-bound flight and its 239 people on board vanished as it passed between Malaysian and Vietnamese air traffic control.

However, an unidentified blip showed up Malaysian military radar at 2.40am on the other side of the country, above the Malacca Strait. The search, which has focused on both areas, remains fruitless, six days after the jet's disappearance.

A spokesman for Rolls-Royce said the company could not comment on the flight, since under International Civil Aviation Organisation rules it can only turn over the data to investigators. "We are helping the authorities and giving them all the support we can," he said.

Rolls-Royce monitors jet engines around the world through an automatic system called Engine Health Management.

This sends the temperature, pressure and other technical details of the engines while in flight back to its headquarters in Derby. The information is not a continuous stream, but transmitted by the plane in packets when it connects over a satellite or radio transmitter.

In the case of Flight MH370, the Malaysian authorities said they had checked with Rolls-Royce and that there was no data sent after the plane lost contact.

Another apparent clue to the mystery also turned out to be a false lead yesterday after Chinese satellite photographs from last Sunday, released by the state media on Wednesday night, were debunked.

The Chinese ambassador to Malaysia said the photographs, which claimed to show large pieces of debris roughly 200 miles from where the plane last made contact, should not have been released and were "a mistake". Earlier Malaysia and Vietnam scrambled aircraft to look once again at the area shown in the photographs, but could find no sign of any debris.

"We have spared no expense and no effort," said Mr Hishamuddun. "There is no real precedent for a situation like this. The plane has vanished".

In Beijing, relatives and friends of the missing passengers spent another angry day cooped up in a hotel in the city centre, demanding, but not receiving, any answers.

Several relatives have now threatened to sue Malaysia Airlines for not carrying out an efficient search, and a lawyer named Wang Guanhua from the Ribbeck law firm in Beijing materialised to offer them legal advice.

However, Mr Wang said it was a long road to any potential court action. "Since the location of the plane has not been found, there is a long way to go before any cases. If it turns out to be a terrorist attack, then of course that will not be a legal case. If it is a civil accident, the Montreal convention states that there should be compensation of at least $200,000 (£120,000) per person. If the fault lies with Boeing, then the case can be held in the United States," he said.

Additional reporting by Adam Wu