Indonesia says missing AirAsia plane can be at “bottom of sea”

A missing AirAsia jet carrying 162 people could be at the bottom of the sea after it was presumed to have crashed off the Indonesian coast, an official said on Monday.

The head of Indonesia’s search and rescue agency, Soelistyo, said this to reporters when asked about the missing plane’s likely location.

The Indonesia AirAsia plane disappeared after its pilot failed to get permission to fly higher to avoid bad weather during a flight from the Indonesian city of Surabaya to Singapore on Sunday.

“Flight QZ8501 did not issue a distress signal and disappeared over the Java Sea five minutes after requesting the change of course, which was refused because of heavy air traffic. Based on our coordinates, we expect it is in the sea, so for now we think it is on the sea floor,’’ he said.

A senior Indonesian civil aviation source said that authorities had the flight’s radar data.

He added that they were waiting for search and rescue teams to find debris before they started their investigation into the cause of the accident.

On board Flight QZ8501 were 155 Indonesians, three South Koreans, and one person each from Singapore, Malaysia and Britain, while the co-pilot was French.

The incident caps a disastrous year for Malaysia-affiliated airlines, with Indonesia AirAsia 49 per cent owned by Malaysia-based budget carrier AirAsia.

Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370 went missing on March 8 on a trip from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing with 239 passengers and crew and has not been found.

On July 17, the same airline’s Flight MH17 was shot down over Ukraine, killing all 298 people on board.

The AirAsia group, including affiliates in Thailand, the Philippines and India, had not suffered a crash since its Malaysian budget operations began in 2002.

The group’s shares in Kuala Lumpur fell as much as 12.9 per cent on Monday.

(Reuters/NAN)