Posted on 12/27/2014 7:44:11 PM PST by kristinn
An Air Asia plane travelling from Surabaya, Indonesia to Singapore has lost contact with air traffic control, Indonesia's Metro TV reported on Sunday. - See more at:
SNIP
...He said the plane had asked for an unusual route before it lost contact, Reuters reported.
There are reportedly 162 people on board.
(Excerpt) Read more at straitstimes.com ...
Very tragic indeed. I’m watching tv and they were showing family members at the airport who are waiting for word on their loved ones. So sad.
But you’re right. POW!!!!!!! Nature has a way of reminding us every now and then who’s really in charge.
I wasn’t aware the wreck of the Perth had been found, that’s interesting.
I have a little house by the sea which overlooks the Sunda Strait where the battle took place. If one can even dignify it with the term “battle” the poor Houston and Perth walked into a turkey shoot and never even landed a glove on the Japanese. One Japanese transport was sunk but by a Japanese destroyer in error. A few days after the battle the destroyer captain sought out the transport captain to apologise for sinking his ship. The transport captain waved away the apology saying “We’ll let the Houston have the honor of sinking my ship shall we?”
I think of a microburst which can occur over the central US. Basically the upper level winds are pushed straight down along the leading edge of a storm. So you can have 100MPH winds in the vertical direction.
Well, since he pretty much stays on vacation it wouldn't be much of a surprise.
They’ve mentioned that on tv as a strong possibility.
Whatever it was, it was sudden enough the pilots didn’t have time to send out a distress signal.
So many scenarios as to what could have happened. We won’t know what did happen until they get their hands on the black box.
Reddit is apparently running a live update stream: http://www.reddit.com/live/u5bmnl5imzk4
“Powerful storms littered the flight path of the AirAsia passenger plane that went missing with 162 aboard on Sunday, according to forecasters. Flight QZ8501 lost contact with air traffic control after requesting permission to change course due to weather.
While there is no clear indication of what happened to the jet and what caused its disappearance, Michael Palmer — lead forecaster at The Weather Channel — said “there were numerous showers and hail throughout the Java Sea and the flight path.” The large clusters of thunderstorms, some as tall as 50,000 feet, would have forced a pilot to change course, he added. The flight “could have run into turbulence and hail. We don’t know if it was the cause but certainly the weather was not calm,” Palmer added. “
I was going off the comments on the link I posted too. Seems they may have been wrong.
General aviation planes can buy a box for a few hundred bucks which will transmit position info every minute via the satellite phone network.
One would think airliners would have one.
The weather never is calm at that location - tropical storms always whipping up. But they are not usually dangerous to planes. However, even if the plane was smashed by a storm - one would expect them to immediately find the wreckage. They had more than 8 hours of daylight, and a full search with military jets, but there has been no announcement more than that it is missing.
Very good point. I do not believe that a plane can just disappear, and that they are without any effective tracking device.
Thanks for the info. Yes it is so sad.
I like your user name, Sarah. My first car was a ‘66 Barracuda. Wish I still had it since now it would be worth big bucks.
Sure. They are out there looking for wallets and coin purses.
//sarc
Perhaps that is what lost contact.
http://asiancorrespondent.com/129391/flight-qz8501-live/
+++ ALL TIMES SINGAPORE TIME – REFRESH FOR UPDATES +++
8pm: Thanks for following our live coverage of the search for missing flight QZ8501. We will resume coverage when the search resumes tomorrow.
7.45pm: The search and rescue operation for missing flight QZ 8501 has been called off for the night. It will resume tomorrow.
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