Indonesia authorities have declared the Indonesia AirAsia A320 operating flight QZ8501 from Surabaya to Singapore with 162 aboard which went missing Sunday as lost at the bottom of the Java Sea.
Sightings by the crew of an Australian plane, a P3 Orion, of suspicious objects 1,100km from where contact was lost the Indonesia AirAsia aircraft are not believed to be from the A320.
Today Indonesia’s National Search and Rescue Agency chief Bambang Soelistyo told a press conference that “based on the coordinates given to us and evaluation that the estimated crash position is in the sea, the hypothesis is the plane is at the bottom of the sea.”
A multinational search and rescue team has so far failed to find any confirmed trace of the flight despite 12 ships, three helicopters and seven planes scouring an area 220 km south east of Belitung Island in the Java Sea where radar contact was lost.
Severe weather impact is thought to be responsible for the apparent loss of the six year old aircraft.
A leaked radar screenshot from AirNav Indonesia, the air traffic controller, obtained by AirlineRatings.com shows that the A320 had critically lost 200km/hour in ground airspeed in a matter of minutes and it could no longer sustain flight at the altitude it was flying. The forecast winds at 32,000ft were for a tailwind of about 30km/hour, although that could have changed significantly. However other aircraft in the vicinity were travelling at normal speeds.
Air traffic controllers lost contact with the A320 just five minutes after crew requested a deviation of their flight route to avoid storms. One minute after that the transponder signals disappeared indicating a catastrophic failure.
An experienced A320 captain told AirlineRatings.com that the crew may have been deceived by the aircraft’s radar, which was not the latest model available. However the plane’s commander Captain Iriyanto was a 20,537 veteran of which 6100 hours was with Indonesia Air Asia. The co-pilot was Rémi Emmanuel Plesel, who had a total of 2,275 flying hours with AirAsia Indonesia.
According to the Indonesia Ministry of Transport the plane took off at a takeoff weight of 63,624kg under its maximum of 70,796kg.
In shades of the initial search for MH370 which disappeared on March 8, it was revealed yesterday that it was almost one hour after contact was lost with QZ8501 that an “aircraft position uncertain” alert was issued and a full 98 minutes before a distress alert was declared by air traffic control.
Indonesia’s Meteorology and Geophysics Agency said that thunderstorms were detected up to 13,400 metres in the same area at the time the A320 was reported to have lost contact.
Indonesia, Singapore, Malaysia and Australia are involved in the search and rescue operation.
