AirAsia (Photo : Reuters)
The missing AirAsia Flight 8501 from Surabaya, Indonesia has 162 people aboard, CNN reported.
Included in the 162 people carried by the AirAsia Flight 8501 are two pilots, five cabin crew members and 155 passengers.
Surabaya's Juanda airport general manager Trikora Raharjo told The Associated Press said that among 16 of the passengers are children while one is an infant. Six of the passengers are foreigners and the rest are Indonesians. Three of the foreigners are South Koreans, one is Singaporean, one is Malaysian and one is British.
The AirAsia Indonesia aircraft was on its way to Singapore when it requested to deviate from the planned flight route because of weather. As the plane headed toward Singapore, it was still under Indonesian air traffic control until communication was eventually lost.
According to AirAsia Indonesia, the missing aircraft took off at around 5:20 a.m. local time on Dec. 28, Sunday and two hours later, it lost contact with air traffic control, which was about an hour before its schedule to land.
Indonesia's transportation ministry official Hadi Mustofa said that around 42 minutes after the AirAsia Flight 8501 took off the airport in Surabaya, communication was lost and the aircraft was believed to be between Java islands and Kalimantan over the Java Sea.
Jakarta ground control was informed about the missing Indonesian aircraft almost 30 minutes after communication was lost, according to the Singapore aviation authority.
With the registration number PK-AXC, the missing AirAsia aircraft was an Airbus A320-200 based in Malaysia's Sepang, which is near Kuala Lumpur, according to USA Today.
While rescue operations and search are under way, authorities on Belitung island, which is almost halfway between Surabaya and Singapore, reportedly found the wreckage.
