Air Asia A320 disappears over the Java Sea.

[The Duchess of Zeon]

Article link here

JAKARTA: An AirAsia flight from the Indonesian city of Surabaya to Singapore lost contact with air traffic control on Sunday, Indonesian media said, citing a Transport Ministry official.

Transport Ministry official Hadi Mustofa said the aircraft, flight number QZ 8501, lost contact with the Jakarta air traffic control tower at 6:17 a.m local time. (2317 GMT).

The Airbus 320-200 had 155 passengers and crew on board, another Indonesian Transport official said.

Mustofa said the plane had asked for an unusual route before it lost contact. (emph added).

The flight had been due in Singapore at 8:30 a.m. Singapore time (0030 GMT). The Singapore airport said on its website the status of the flight was "delayed".

"unusual route" requested, but no indications of any kind of signal of distress. Surely coincidence, but eeriely similar to the bizarre last attempts at communication and course diversions of MH370.

[The Romulan Republic]

And its in the same part of the world as the missing plane. Conspiracy theorists will be all over this.

[Fingolfin_Noldor]

This has been a really really really horrible year for Malaysian aviation.

[The Duchess of Zeon]

Half of all airliner losses in the world in 2014 were of Malaysian (the country) aircraft.

[AniThyng]

Technically this was an Indonesian registered plane with an Indonesian crew of Airasia's Indonesian subsidiary but yeah, horrible all around and a lousy start to 2015 in top of everything else

[Fingolfin_Noldor]

Technically this was an Indonesian registered plane with an Indonesian crew of Airasia's Indonesian subsidiary but yeah, horrible all around and a lousy start to 2015 in top of everything else

The year hasn't ended yet!

[The Duchess of Zeon]

No wreckage location has been confirmed to date; the search is still ongoing. The aircraft has now been missing for 9 hours and the flight time with fuel on board from time of disappearance was 4.5 hours, so she is down now wherever she is. There are unconfirmed reports of an aircraft down east of Belitung Island on the northwest edge of the Java Sea, but no confirmation that the aircraft in fact went into the water in that location or that wreckage has been found has been made by anyone authoritative. (that is approximately 80 miles from where she disappeared from radar/comms).

[Broomstick]

And its in the same part of the world as the missing plane. Conspiracy theorists will be all over this.

Two aircraft gone missing in similar ways in the same general region in less than a year? That's more reason for a conspiracy than most such theories.

That said - if there was a really severe storm that could have been the cause. It's a little early for details.

[AniThyng]

The amount of people who think this is higher powers way of sending a message to the ruling government makes me regretfully angry. I am no fan of the government but this sort of magical thinking just...I can't even...

[Zaune]

The newsreader on the radio was saying they requested a diversion around severe weather, if that tells you anything.

[SpottedKitty]

The newsreader on the radio was saying they requested a diversion around severe weather, if that tells you anything.

An aviation specialist on BBC News this afternoon mentioned going up to 38,000 ft — still under the plane's operational ceiling, but no idea of the height of the storm they were trying to avoid.

[Broomstick]

Storms have been known to build as high as 50,000 feet. Severe turbulence can extend as much as 20 miles/30 km out from the clouds, or be located anywhere within the clouds. Flying through such a storm means trying to find the least exciting part of the storm and go through that, but if you're wrong... well, it can be bad news.

[LaCroix]

As an old flight instructor used to tell me. In peace time, there is _no_ reason to fly into a cloud.
He was talking about small private airplanes, but if the storm gets bigger, this rule starts to apply to everybody.

I'm pretty sure that the pilot should have aborted the flight and have returned to their airport instead of trying to fly through that storm, but in this time and age, and being an indonesian pilot, I'm pretty sure that taking the safe bet would have cost him his carreer, so he tried to go around, instead.

[Sky Captain]

This looks like another version of Air France Flight 447 where airspeed indicators failed after flying through thunderstorms causing airplane to stall and crash. If this speculation turns out to be true I bet Airbus will have lots of hard questions to answer.

[Broomstick]

Too early to tell on that theory, not the least because so many of the affected Airbus planes have had their pitot systems upgraded, making pitot ice-over much less likely.

Debris may have been spotted today, waiting on confirmation.

[SpottedKitty]

but in this time and age, and being an indonesian pilot, I'm pretty sure that taking the safe bet would have cost him his carreer, so he tried to go around, instead.

Are you thinking about parallels with the crash at San Francisco last year? I remember coming across a suggestion that the Korean cockpit crew couldn't come right out and tell the captain he was flying much too low and slow, because of a "superior is not to be questioned" mindset. All they could do was suggest and talk around the problem until it was obvious the plane was in a stall and wouldn't reach the runway threshold.

[LaCroix]

but in this time and age, and being an indonesian pilot, I'm pretty sure that taking the safe bet would have cost him his carreer, so he tried to go around, instead.

Are you thinking about parallels with the crash at San Francisco last year? I remember coming across a suggestion that the Korean cockpit crew couldn't come right out and tell the captain he was flying much too low and slow, because of a "superior is not to be questioned" mindset. All they could do was suggest and talk around the problem until it was obvious the plane was in a stall and wouldn't reach the runway threshold.

This is part of the underlying problem, imho.

Even if the pilot would have said, "screw it, I'm not gonna fly into that storm, it's just too huge", he'd probably getting in trouble/shafted for disrupting flight plans and costing money.

And he can't really justify his decision, because there will always be someone there to call him out for being a coward or incompetent. Or that they already flew through worse. And there is no proof that actually it was that bad but his own say-so, until the plane was already getting damaged. Which will cause even bigger problems and he will most likely be past the point of no return at this time.

Thus, social and economic pressure will make pilots usually opt for the high-risk option and fly into weather that is worse than what their planes are built to withstand. And if they are flying "on the limit", a tiny defect on the plane (which are usually serviced by a maintenance crew that is under the same pressure to get results as the flight crews, and might take shortcuts) will put the plane from "still safe" into "oh crap" territory.

You can see that trend a bit in western air travel (pay less, work more - just look at the number of strikes during the last few years), but over there, with even less job protection, it's much worse.

[Hillary]

According to the BBC, 6 bodies have been found along with debris. On my phone so can't link.

[Siege]

Here:

At least six bodies have been found and at least three recovered in the search for missing AirAsia Flight QZ8501, Indonesian officials and media say.

The bodies were spotted along with debris floating in the Java Sea off the Indonesian part of Borneo, in one of the search zones for the plane.

One official said the debris was 95% likely to be from the missing aircraft.

The Airbus A320-200, carrying 162 people from Surabaya in Indonesia to Singapore, disappeared on Sunday.

The search operation is now in its third day, with the area widened to cover 13 zones over land and sea.

During a news conference by the head of the operation, shown live on Indonesian TV, pictures of the debris were shown including a body floating on the water.

Relatives of passengers on the plane watching the pictures were visibly shocked.

Full story at the link.

[Crazedwraith]

Well that is bad news, but at least it's news, they actually found something this time.

[Lord Revan]

Well that is bad news, but at least it's news, they actually found something this time.

tbh at this point we should have pretty much dismissed the possibility of finding that most of the people were alive, though hopefully there's a full investigation the problem is fixed so that no more tradegies like this will happen.

[Broomstick]

While I'm all for reducing aviation accidents to zero regrettably I don't think that will ever happen. However, aviation does have a history of actually learning from accidents, so I hope once the reason for this one is known we can prevent a repeat of the same circumstances.

Although 2014 was a low accident year for flight it's be a very bad year for aviation in/from/to Indonesia. One airplane still missing (!), one shot down in a war zone, and now this....whatever the cause of "this".

Although finding bodies and debris is terrible on one level on another it's optimistic now that the rest of the plane (or most of it) will be located, we'll get some answers from the black boxes, and the grieving will have some answers as to what actually happened and even a body to bury and help conclude the rituals of grieving.

[AniThyng]

Although 2014 was a low accident year for flight it's be a very bad year for aviation in/from/to Indonesia. One airplane still missing (!), one shot down in a war zone, and now this....whatever the cause of "this".

Maybe this is splitting hairs, but Indonesia and Malaysia are two different countries...bad year for aviation in/from/to South East Asia, yeah, especially so for Malaysia because until 2014, the last time a Malaysian passenger jetliner crashed was in the 80's due to a hijacking. Since then, Singapore has had incidents (SIA006, Silkair), Indonesia has had incidents (Adam Air most famously) but Malaysia has rarely had any...until 2014 with MH370, MH17 and QZ8501, which while technically an indonesian plane is indeed run by a Malaysian owned and branded airline group.

[Broomstick]

:::: notes down corrections re: airlines and nations :::: I stand corrected.

[Alyrium Denryle]

Well that is bad news, but at least it's news, they actually found something this time.

In this region, it would be remarkable if they failed to find debris. The Java Sea is shallow enough that during ice ages, the whole area is land. On average about 60 meters deep. Even if the plane sinks to the bottom, it will be findable with sidescan sonar, and everything can be recovered by Scuba divers (Nitrox being ill-advised but possible, Heliox mixes preferable).