The search for missing AirAsia Flight 8501 may have received a boost Monday after an Indonesian officials said that Australian planes had spotted objects in the Java Sea search area.
Jakarta's Air Force base commander Rear Marshal Dwi Putranto told the Associated Press that he was informed Monday that an Orion aircraft had detected "suspicious" objects near Nangka island, about 100 miles southwest of Pangkalan Bun, near central Kalimantan, or 700 miles from the location where the plane lost contact with air traffic controllers early Sunday.
"However, we cannot be sure whether it is part of the missing AirAsia plane," Putranto cautioned, "We are now moving in that direction, which is in cloudy conditions."
Air Force spokesman Rear Marshal Hadi Tjahnanto told Indonesia's MetroTV that an Indonesian helicopter in the eastern part of Belitung island spotted two oily spots on the sea about 105 nautical miles east of Tanjung Pandan -- much closer to the point of last contact. He said samples of the oil would be collected and analyzed to see if they are connected to the missing plane.
False sightings of objects and oil slicks that initially appear to be from a missing plane were among the issues that plagued the search for Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 earlier this year. The fate of that plane, which vanished March 8 with 239 people on board, remains unknown.
As the search for the Airbus A320 resumed Monday morning local time (Sunday evening Eastern Time), Indonesia's search and rescue chief said it was likely that the plane had crashed with 162 people on board.
"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," Henry Bambang Soelistyo told reporters.
Flight 8501 vanished Sunday morning in airspace thick with storm clouds on its way from Surabaya, Indonesia, to Singapore. 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 to 38,000 feet 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 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, 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 Adm. Sigit Setiayana, the Naval Aviation Center 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.
Searchers had to cope with heavy rain Sunday, but Setiayana said Monday that visibility was good. "God willing, we can find it soon," he told The Associated Press.
Sunardi, a forecaster at Indonesia's Meteorology and Geophysics Agency, said Sunday dense storm clouds were detected at up to 44,000 feet in the area at the time.
"There could have been turbulence, lightning and vertical as well as horizontal strong winds within such clouds," said Sunardi, who like many Indonesians uses only one name.
Airline pilots routinely fly around thunderstorms, said John Cox, a former accident investigator. Using on-board radar, flight crews can typically see a storm forming from more than 100 miles away.
In such cases, pilots have plenty of time to find a way around the storm cluster or look for gaps to fly through, he said.
"It's not like you have to make an instantaneous decision," Cox said. Storms can be hundreds of miles long, but "because a jet moves at 8 miles a minute, if you to go 100 miles out of your way, it's not a problem."
Authorities have not said whether they lost only the secondary radar target, which is created by the plane's transponder, or whether the primary radar target, which is created by energy reflected from the plane's body, was lost as well, Cox said.
The plane had an Indonesian captain, Iryanto, who uses one name, and a French co-pilot, five cabin crew members and 155 passengers, including 16 children and one infant, the airline said in a statement. Among the passengers were three South Koreans, a Malaysian, a British national and his 2-year-old Singaporean daughter. The rest were Indonesians, who are frequent visitors to Singapore.
AirAsia said the captain had more than 20,000 flying hours, of which 6,100 were with AirAsia on the Airbus 320. The first officer had 2,275 flying hours.
"Papa, come home, I still need you," Angela Anggi Ranastianis, the captain's 22-year-old daughter pleaded on her Path page late Sunday, which was widely quoted by Indonesian media. "Bring back my papa. Papa, please come home."
At Iryanto's house in the East Java town of Sidoarjo, neighbors, relatives and friends gathered Monday to pray and recite the Quran to support the distraught family. Their desperate cries were so loud, they could sometimes be heard outside where three LCD televisions had been set up to monitor search developments.
"He is a good man. That's why people here appointed him as our neighborhood chief for the last two years," said Bagianto Djoyonegoro, a friend and neighbor.
Many recalled him as an experienced Air Force pilot who flew F-16 fighter jets before becoming a commercial airline pilot.
The missing aircraft was delivered to AirAsia in October 2008, and the plane had accumulated about 23,000 flight hours during some 13,600 flights, Airbus said in a statement.
The aircraft had last undergone scheduled maintenance on Nov. 16, according to AirAsia.
The airline has dominated budget travel in Southeast Asia for years, highlighting its low fares with the slogan, "Now everyone can fly." It flies short routes of just a few hours, connecting the region's large cities. Recently, it has tried to expand into long-distance flying through sister airline AirAsia X.
"Until today, we have never lost a life," AirAsia group CEO Tony Fernandes, who founded the low-cost carrier in 2001, told reporters at Jakarta airport. "But I think that any airline CEO who says he can guarantee that his airline is 100 percent safe, is not accurate."
The A320 family of jets, which includes the A319 and A321, has a good safety record, with just 0.14 fatal accidents per million takeoffs, according to a safety study published by Boeing in August.
Flight 8501 disappeared while at its cruising altitude, which is usually the safest part of a trip. Just 10 percent of fatal crashes from 2004 to 2013 occurred while a plane was in that stage of flight, the safety report said.
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