indonesia Plane-search area expanded

Associated Press

SURABAYA, Indonesia

More planes will be in the air and more ships on the sea today hunting for Air-Asia Flight 8501 in a widening search off Indonesia that has dragged into a third day without any solid leads.

At least 30 ships, 15 aircraft and seven helicopters were looking for the jet carrying 162 people, said Indonesia’s Search and Rescue Agency chief Henry Bambang Soelistyo. Most of the craft were Indonesian, but Singapore, Malaysia and Australia contributed to the effort. Aircraft from Thailand planned to join today’s search.

He said the search area would be expanded to land areas, with four military helicopters dispatched just after sunrise near Pangkalan Bun on the western part of Borneo island and to smaller islands of Bangka and Belitung.

“Until now, we have not yet found any signal or indication of the plane’s whereabouts,” Soelistyo told The Associated Press, adding fishermen from Belitung island also were helping.

The U.S. Navy also is joining the search. It said in a statement that the USS Sampson, a destroyer, which already was on an independent deployment in the Western Pacific, and will arrive in the area later today.

The longer the search goes without turning up any wreckage or hint of what happened to plane, the more the incident will evoke memories of the still-unexplained disappearance of Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 in March.

The AirAsia pilots had been worried about the weather and had sought permission to climb above threatening clouds. Air-traffic control couldn’t say yes immediately — there was no room. Six other airliners were crowding the airspace, forcing Flight 8501 to remain at a lower altitude.

Minutes later, the jet was gone from the radar without issuing a distress signal. The plane is believed to have crashed into Indonesia’s Java Sea, but broad aerial surveys so far have turned up no firm evidence of the missing Airbus A320-200.

On Monday, searchers spotted two oily patches and floating objects in separate locations, but it was not known any of it was related to the plane that vanished Sunday halfway into what should have been a two-hour hop from Surabaya, Indonesia, to Singapore. The area is a busy shipping lane. Officials saw little reason to believe the flight met anything but a grim fate.

Based on the plane’s last known coordinates, the aircraft probably crashed into the water and “is at the bottom of the sea,” Indonesia search-and-rescue chief Henry Bambang Soelistyo said. Still, searchers planned to expand their efforts onto land today.

The last communication from the cockpit to air- traffic control was a request by one of the pilots to climb from 32,000 feet to 38,000 feet because of the weather. The tower was not able to comply immediately because of the other planes, said Bambang Tjahjono, director of the state-owned company in charge of air traffic control.

The twin-engine plane was last seen on radar four minutes after the final communication.

A storm alone isn’t going to bring down a modern plane designed to withstand severe weather. But weather paired with a pilot error or a mechanical failure could be disastrous.