Jakarta : The multinational search for the AirAsia aircraft that went missing after taking off from Indonesia with 162 people on board continued for the second day on Monday with experts suspecting that the Airbus is at the bottom of the sea.
The extensive search has yielded little. A helicopter saw two oily patches in the Java Sea while an Australian search plane spotted “suspicious” objects near an island, but the Indonesian Vice President later said the debris was not from the missing plane.
Also, British newspaper Daily Mail has revealed that the pilot of the ill-fated aircraft was denied permission to climb from 32,000ft to 38,000ft due to the adverse weather conditions. The request could not immediately be granted because there was another plane in the airspace at 34,000ft and by the time clearance could be given, Flight 8501 had disappeared.
Pilot was not allowed to climb as air space was crowded. By the time nod was given, it lost contact; slow speed induced a stall
The announcement that the aircraft might be at the bottom of the sea has dashed the hopes of relatives of the passengers and crew who were keeping their fingers crossed in the belief that they may find survivors. That is because the waters in the search area, which is roughly the size of California, are not particularly deep at between 130ft and 160ft.
One aviation expert was of the view that the crew, in trying to avoid the thunderstorm by climbing, somehow found themselves flying too slow and this induced an aerodynamic stall similar to the circumstances of the loss of Air France AF447 in 2009. The radar plot shows the pilot at 36,000 feet and climbing at a speed of 353 knots, which was approximately 100 knots too slow at that altitude, it is pointed out. The daughter of the missing AirAsia captain on Monday made an emotional plea for her father to come home, telling him: ‘‘I still need you.’’ His picture was posted on social media by his 22-year-old daughter. Many recalled him as an experienced Air Force pilot who flew F-16 fighter jets before becoming a commercial airline pilot. AirAsia said the captain had more than 20,000 flying hours, of which 6,100 were with AirAisa on the Airbus 320.
Australia, Singapore and Malaysia have deployed planes and ships to assist in the Indonesian search. If the plane is indeed found on the ocean floor, there would be a challenge in getting the plane to the surface because Indonesia does not have the “submersible” equipment.
A Virgin Atlantic Boeing 747 with up to 400 people on board made an emergency landing on Monday at Gatwick airport in UK. The aircraft had only three quarters of its landing gear functional after a set of wheels on the starboard wing refused to drop. For several hours the jumbo jet circled Gatwick and made several low-altitude passes, so that engineers could inspect the landing gear fault, leaving some passengers distraught. Some of them were even seen crying. But the terrified passengers cheered and applauded the pilot after he landed the jumbo jet safely.
A Jet Airways aircraft from Mumbai with 125 passengers and six crew members on board made an emergency landing at Kathmandu airport following a bird hit that caused a minor fire in one of its engines. The plane, however, made a safe landing at the Tribhuvan International Airport. “The bird entered the left engine causing a fire,” an airline spokesperson said. However, the fire was immediately brought under control on landing and all passengers were evacuated safely, officials added.
