AirAsia plane reported missing en route from Indonesia to Singapore;
December 28, 2014
A jet on a flight from Surabaya, Indonesia, to Singapore with 162 people aboard is missing, AirAsia Indonesia officials said Sunday.
Flight QZ8501 took off at about 5:20 a.m. Sunday local time and lost contact with air traffic control at about 7:24 a.m., about an hour before it was scheduled to land, the airline said on its Facebook page. The time in Surabaya is 12 hours ahead of Eastern Standard Time; the time in Singapore and Jakarta is 13 hours ahead of ET.
The contact was lost about 42 minutes after takeoff from Indonesia's Surabaya airport, Hadi Mustofa, an official of the transportation ministry told Indonesia's MetroTV.
The aircraft was an Airbus A320-200 with the registration number PK-AXC, said the low-cost airline, based in Sepang, Malaysia, near Kuala Lumpur. Search and rescue operations are under way.