Missing QZ8501: Oil, objects found in sea

SURABAYA — An Indonesian helicopter saw two oily spots in the search area for the missing AirAsia jetliner today (Dec 29), and an Australian search plane spotted objects hundreds of miles away, but it was too early to know whether either was connected to the aircraft and its 162 passengers and crew.

In any case, officials saw little reason to believe AirAsia Flight 8501 met anything but a grim fate after it disappeared from radar yesterday morning over the Java Sea.

“Based on the coordinates that we know, the evaluation would be that any estimated crash position is in the sea, and that the hypothesis is the plane is at the bottom of the sea,” Indonesia search and rescue chief Henry Bambang Soelistyo said.

The Airbus A320-200 vanished yesterday morning in airspace thick with storm clouds on its way from Surabaya, Indonesia, to Singapore.

After the search expanded today, Jakarta’s Air Force base commander Rear Marshal Dwi Putranto said an Australian Orion aircraft had detected “suspicious” objects near Nangka island, about 100 miles (160km) southwest of Pangkalan Bun, near central Kalimantan, or 700 miles (1,120km) from the location where the plane lost contact.

“However, we cannot be sure whether it is part of the missing AirAsia plane,” Mr Putranto said. “We are now moving in that direction, which is in cloudy conditions.”

Air Force spokesman Rear Marshal Hadi Tjahnanto told MetroTV that an Indonesian helicopter spotted two oily spots in the Java Sea east of Belitung island. Unlike the Australian discovery, the oily spots were within the search area, which stretches 60km around the point where air-traffic controllers lost contact with the plane.

The last communication from the cockpit to air traffic control was a request by one of the pilots to increase altitude from 32,000 feet (9,754m) to 38,000 feet (11,582m) because of the rough weather. Air traffic control was not able to immediately grant the request because another plane was in airspace at 34,000 feet, said Mr Bambang Tjahjono, director of the state-owned company in charge of air-traffic control.

By the time clearance could be given, Flight 8501 had disappeared, Mr Tjahjono said. The twin-engine, single-aisle plane, which never sent a distress signal, was last seen on radar four minutes after the last communication from the cockpit.

First Admiral Sigit Setiayana, the Naval Aviation Centre commander at the Surabaya air force base, said 12 navy ships, five planes, three helicopters and a number of warships were taking part in the search, along with ships and planes from Singapore and Malaysia. The Australian Air Force also sent a search plane.