Missing AirAsia flight QZ8501 is likely “at the bottom of the sea,” an Indonesian official has said, as suspected wreckage spotted in the Java Sea proved to be unrelated to the missing jet.
“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,” Bambang Soelistyo, Indonesia’s National Search and Rescue Agency chief told reporters on Monday.
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The jet carrying 162 people vanished on Sunday morning as it approached severe weather over the Java Sea en route from Indonesia to Singapore. The airline confirmed it lost contact with flight QZ5801 approximately 40 minutes after it left Juanda International Airport at 5.35am.
Debris in the ocean spotted by an Australian search plane is unrelated to the missing AirAsia jet, the Indonesian vice president Jusuf Kalla told reporters on Monday.
“It has been checked and no sufficient evidence was found to confirm what was reported,” he told AFP.
“It is not an easy operation in the sea, especially in bad weather like this,” he added.
AirAsia flight QZ8501 goes missing on the way from Indonesia to Singapore. Read more here.
The suspected wreckage was seen near Nangka island, about 695 miles (1,120km) from the point at which the plane lost contact, according to Jakarta’s Air Force base commander Rear Marshal Dwi Putranto.
The search will now focus on a patch of oil seen off Belitung Island in the Java sea.
“We are making sure whether it was avtur (aviation fuel) from the AirAsia plane or from a vessel because that location is a shipping line,” Indonesian Air Force spokesman Hadi Tjahjanto said.
The Airbus A320-200 went missing after reportedly asking to change its flight path to avoid a storm cloud. Indonesian authorities said that at 6.13am Indonesian pilot Iriyanto contacted air traffic control to request to rise from 32,000ft to 38,000ft.
Jakarta air traffic controllers lost contact with the flight, which did not send a distress signal, a moment later.
Indonesian officials began sweeping the Java Sea for survivors on Sunday afternoon, but called off the search on Sunday evening. They resumed on Monday morning and the search team currently includes vessels and planes from Indonesia, Australia, Singapore and Malaysia, with assistance offered by China and the US.
Teams of specialists and two sets of underwater locator beacon detectors provided by Singapore’s Ministry of Transport Air Accident Investigation Bureau are searching for the flight data recorders of the missing plane.
In addition to the pilot, co-pilot and five cabin crew, there were 155 passengers on board, with 138 adults, 16 children and one infant. Most were Indonesian, but the flight also included one British man accompanying his two-year-old Singaporean daughter, one Malaysian, three South Koreans and a French co-pilot, Remi Emmanual Plesel.
The British man on the flight has been named in reports as industry executive Chi-Man Choi, who is understood to have boarded the flight at the last minute with his two-year-old daughter Zoe.
His brother Chi-Wai Choi, a 46-year-old optometrist from Alsager, Cheshire, told the Guardian he was “prepared for the worst’.
“There’s been no news officially but I guess you would kind of hope there’d be more information. But obviously we are concerned and we are prepared for the worst. We also try not to speculate.”
Choi added that he was flying out to Singapore in the next few days to support his brother’s wife.
It is the third air disaster to affect South East Asia in less than a year. AirAsia is headquartered in Malaysia, home also to Malaysia Airlines, which lost Flight MH370 in the southern Indian Ocean in 2014, and MH17 four months later, shot down over Ukraine.
“We are deeply shocked and saddened by this incident,” Sunu Widyatmoko, CEO of AirAsia Indonesia said in a statement. “We are cooperating with the relevant authorities to the fullest extent to determine the cause of this incident. In the meantime, our main priority is keeping the families of our passengers and colleagues informed on the latest developments.”
The Airbus A320-200 has safely logged 13,600 flights since its maiden voyage in October 2008, according to Airbus, and showed no obvious problems on this journey. The company has not had a fatal accident since it was founded in 1996.
The Foreign Office of the United Kingdom issued a statement saying it had confirmed the identity of the one Briton aboard the flight.
“We have been informed by the local authorities that one British national was on board. Their next of kin has been informed, and we stand ready to provide consular assistance.”
Follow Ben Bryant on Twitter: @benbryant
