Aviation experts have started pointing out the similarities and differences between AirAsia QZ8501 and Malaysia Airlines MH370, which both disappeared from the radar without providing air traffic control a hint as to what exactly happened.
At 6:17 a.m. Indonesian time on Sunday (6:17 p.m. Eastern Time), Indonesia AirAsia flight QZ8501 carrying 155 passengers, including three children and one infant, and seven crew member lost contact went off the radar one minute after the pilot's last contact with air traffic control. The plane, which was travelling from Surabaya, Indonesia to Singapore, was last located flying over the Java Sea between Kalimantan and Java Islands.
"Based on our coordinates, we expect it is in the sea, so for now (we think) it is on the sea floor," Bambang Soelistyo, Indonesia's head of its search and rescue agency, tells Reuters.
Nine months ago, on March 8, 2014, Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 disappeared on the way to Beijing from Kuala Lumpur. Like QZ8501, MH370 did not communicate with air traffic control before diverting south, it is believed, to the Indian Ocean.
QZ8501 is the third incident culminating Malaysia's aviation troubles this year, following Malaysia Airlines MH370 and MH17, which was shot down over Ukraine, killing all 298 people on board. Indonesia AirAsia is part of the AirAsia group, 49 percent of which is owned by the Malaysian budget airlines AirAsia.
An AirAsia official told the press on Sunday that the pilot requested to divert to "an unusual route" before an Indonesia Transport Ministry representative clarified that the pilot was asking permission to change the altitude from 32,000 feet to 38,000 due to heavy clouds in the area, but the request was denied because the area he was requesting showed heavy air traffic. No similar weather woes plagued MH370 in March.
Aviation Peter Stuart Smith says he finds it curious that QZ8501 did not issue a distress call, even amidst bad weather. He also believes it is unusual for modern aircraft to go down due to turbulence during severe weather conditions, especially at the altitude the plane was located.
"Obviously the first priority for the pilots is to fly the aircraft but relaying a message to air traffic control about what's happening only involves depressing a single button on the control column and simply speaking," Smith says. "It would also only take a few seconds to squawk 7700 (emergency) on the SSR box which would alert ATC to there being a problem although not what the problem was."
The pilots of both flights did not issue a distress call, a point which leads former Air Force pilot John Nonce to believe something happened so suddenly that the pilot did not have time to communicate with air traffic control, which last spoke to QZ8501 at 6:13 a.m., four minutes before the plane went missing. MH370, on the other hand, is believed to have kept flying even as air traffic control in Ho Chi Minh, Vietnam noticed the plane out of the radar 17 minutes after last contact.
Unlike the doomed Malaysia Airlines flight, however, experts believe it will be easier to search for QZ8501, as it disappeared over the shallow waters of the Java Sea compared to the deep Indian Ocean into which MH370 is believed to have crashed. Even if the AsiaAir Airbus 320-200 is smaller than Malaysia Airlines' Boeing 777, the flight didn't have the complications that arose from the faulty handover of Malaysia's air traffic control to Vietnam.
"They know where this one was, and if they can't find it then Houston, we have a problem," says Australian aviation expert Neil Hansford.
So far, members of the search and rescue team have discovered suspicious objects floating near central Kalimatan Island, or some 700 miles from the location where air traffic control lost contact. Indonesia Air Force commander Rear Marshal Dwi Putranto says the object was seen by an Australian Orion jet participating in the search.
"However, we cannot be sure whether it is part of the missing AirAsia plane," Putranto tells Associated Press. "We are now moving in that direction, which is in cloudy conditions."
