Indonesia has asked the United States for help in locating the AirAsia jet that went missing on Sunday carrying 162 people, the US State Department said on Monday.
"Today we received a request for assistance locating the airplane, and we are reviewing that request to find out how best we can meet Indonesia's request for assistance," State Department spokesman Jeff Rathke told a regular news briefing.
The Indonesian search team suspects the plane is under water, national search and rescue agency chief FH Bambang Sulistyo said on Monday in Jakarta, with no signal detected from the emergency local transmitter.
Planes and ships from Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore and Australia are scouring the Java Sea, focused on Kumai Bay, for the Airbus Group A320 single-aisle jet that was en route to Singapore from the central Indonesian city of Surabaya when it went off radar screens.
“Based on the coordinates given to us, our evaluation says the likely position where the plane crashed is in the sea,” Mr Sulistyo said.
“The preliminary assumption is that the plane is at the bottom of the sea.” The official, who spoke in Bahasa Indonesia, didn’t elaborate on how the authorities arrived at that conclusion.
The first planes that reached the region where the AirAsia plane was last reported didn’t find any signs of the missing aircraft, Sutono, a communication director at the Indonesian search and rescue agency, said today.
Shares of AirAsia dropped as much as 13 per cent in Kuala Lumpur trading, their biggest slide since 2011.
“We’re devastated, but we don’t know what’s happened yet,” said chief executive officer Tony Fernandes, who bought Malaysia-based AirAsia for 1 ringgit (35¢) in December 2001, at a press conference in Surabaya yesterday.
While AirAsia is based in Sepang, Malaysia, it operates with subsidiaries and affiliates in different countries. The missing plane belonged to its Indonesian operations.
Prime Minister Tony Abbott said the disappearance was not a mystery like the MH370 disappearance or an atrocity like the shooting down of MH17 in Ukraine.
He says it’s an aircraft that was flying a regular route on a regular schedule, hit apparent horrific weather and was downed.
AirAsia QZ8501 was flying at 32,000 feet when the pilots requested to go higher to avoid clouds, Indonesia’s acting Air Transport Director Djoko Murjatmodjo said in Jakarta.
There were storms along AirAsia’s flight path, Accuweather.com said on its website, citing its meteorologist Dave Samuhel. Storms are very active this time of year, Samuhel was quoted as saying, with December and January the wettest period of the year in Indonesia. (Reuters)
"Today we received a request for assistance locating the airplane, and we are reviewing that request to find out how best we can meet Indonesia's request for assistance," State Department spokesman Jeff Rathke told a regular news briefing.
The Indonesian search team suspects the plane is under water, national search and rescue agency chief FH Bambang Sulistyo said on Monday in Jakarta, with no signal detected from the emergency local transmitter.
Planes and ships from Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore and Australia are scouring the Java Sea, focused on Kumai Bay, for the Airbus Group A320 single-aisle jet that was en route to Singapore from the central Indonesian city of Surabaya when it went off radar screens.
“Based on the coordinates given to us, our evaluation says the likely position where the plane crashed is in the sea,” Mr Sulistyo said.
“The preliminary assumption is that the plane is at the bottom of the sea.” The official, who spoke in Bahasa Indonesia, didn’t elaborate on how the authorities arrived at that conclusion.
The first planes that reached the region where the AirAsia plane was last reported didn’t find any signs of the missing aircraft, Sutono, a communication director at the Indonesian search and rescue agency, said today.
Shares of AirAsia dropped as much as 13 per cent in Kuala Lumpur trading, their biggest slide since 2011.
“We’re devastated, but we don’t know what’s happened yet,” said chief executive officer Tony Fernandes, who bought Malaysia-based AirAsia for 1 ringgit (35¢) in December 2001, at a press conference in Surabaya yesterday.
While AirAsia is based in Sepang, Malaysia, it operates with subsidiaries and affiliates in different countries. The missing plane belonged to its Indonesian operations.
Prime Minister Tony Abbott said the disappearance was not a mystery like the MH370 disappearance or an atrocity like the shooting down of MH17 in Ukraine.
He says it’s an aircraft that was flying a regular route on a regular schedule, hit apparent horrific weather and was downed.
AirAsia QZ8501 was flying at 32,000 feet when the pilots requested to go higher to avoid clouds, Indonesia’s acting Air Transport Director Djoko Murjatmodjo said in Jakarta.
There were storms along AirAsia’s flight path, Accuweather.com said on its website, citing its meteorologist Dave Samuhel. Storms are very active this time of year, Samuhel was quoted as saying, with December and January the wettest period of the year in Indonesia. (Reuters)
